Functional Aspects

This web application is designed for managing one or more libraries of medium size with the following needs:

In Administration (click on each option to get more information):

• User managing.
• Managing of interlibrary loans.
• Managing of bibliographic records.
• Managing of subjects and authors.
• To Manage publishing houses.
• Export and import the data in the library according to several formats.


• SQL setences (for the whole database).
• XML (for the whole database).
• The bibliographic records can be exported for MARC (USMARC) or MARCXML formats.
  If you want to see the analysis of the file exported, click here.

At the moment, is not supported the economic managing of the library or the interlibrary loans, although, this can be do creating new users as libraries -not physical individuals- to which can be borrowed works as other users.

For the users of the library (click on each option to get more information):

• Search for bibliographic records.
• Search for information related with authors.
• Search for publishing houses.
• Managing a personal database of definitions classified according with the subjects in the library.
• To manage a personal database of bibliographic notes.
• To manage his own list of bibliographic references.
• Search in other libraries that support the Z3950 protocol. Click here to see an example

For Selling Books:

Some libraries could have a service of publications or a little bookstore where can be brought works produced by the own institution or other specialized books. Thinking on this fact, has been keeping in mind the possibility to include a module for managing the process of the online selling and the in situ selling.

Portal management:

The portal lets you to change of the front end aspects:

• Multilingual support. Can be easily added or deleted new languages.
• Personalisation of the skin according to the needs of each library.
• Management of sections.
• Can be easily add new modules, as could be a forum.

 Technical Requirements

The basic requirements are:

• Operative system: Linux or Windows.
• Web server: Apache for both operative systems, but this will works too with IIS under Windows with PHP and Perl as FastCGI.
• Server Side Script languages: PHP (version 5.x) and Perl.
• Database: PostgreSQL 7.3.4 or higher for Linux and PostgreSQL 8.0 for Windows. This application works too with MySQL, but is not recommended. Oracle 8 or highers is theoretically supported too but it has not been tested.
• Mail Server for Windows and Linux.

The web pages of the application are HTML 4.0 compliant and can be viewed under the following browsers:

• Mozilla Firefox >=3.x
• Microsoft Internet Explorer >=5.0.
• Opera
• Safari
• Konqueror.

The implementation diagram bellow shows how the system would be disposed:

On this configuration could be made changes and have in the same machine: the web server, the database server and the mail server. Regarding the access of the library users, can be made some changes (according to the previous diagram):

• The access of the users and administrator in the same LAN.
• Mixed access (show in the diagram), that is, the users could access the library from any external point to the LAN (internet), or from inside the library LAN.
• External access. In this configuration, the users will access the library from any point of Internet but ever outside the LAN of the library.

 More information

 Please, for any further information, don't hesitate to send your questions to the following e-mail address: contact@library-online.co.uk.

 Managing Authors and Subjects

a.1. Managing Authors. This section includes 5 options:

• Add a new author.
• Modify existing authors.
• Delete existing authors.
• Search or consult authors.
• Delete duplicate authors.

a.1.1. Add/modifiy users. The information associated with each author is:

• Surname(s). The surname(s) of the author space separated and if is a composed surname the parts are joined by a hyphen.
• First name. The author's names.
• Link to the biography of the author. In this field could be included a link to a document or more commonly a web page with the author's biography.
• Type of author. The types of authors are two: author or translator.
• Subjects. Here must be classified the author according with the subjects available in the library, can be specified one or more (i.e.: Anthropology, Ethology, ...). The categories used are the same to those used when adding a new bibliographic record, that is, UDC.

a.1.2. Search for authors. The searching or consult of authors is allowed for the library users, basically is focused to consult the author's biography.

a.1.3. Delete duplicates. This option was think for managing duplicates authors. The existence of two o more duplicate authors in the database could be common, since is difficult to control the name of the author as unique key, a simple change in one letter makes the authors different for the application, but in fact are the same. Was think to use an algorithm of sound similarity when inserting authors but this was inoperative, because the long list of coincidences every time an author is added to the database.

The method used for delete duplicate authors, consist in single option that shows a list of authors sorted by surname, but only those presenting a high percentage of similarity. In order to avoid inconsistences in the database, when one author is deleted, because is considered as duplicate, the bibliographic records depending on this author are transferred to the target author selected by us.

a.2. Managing Subjects. This group of options are mainly focused to manage subjects under the Universal Decimal Classification, although, key words not depending on any specific classification are allowed too. The information for any subject is the next:

• Type. The type sets if the subject is UDC or a free keyword.
• UDC Code. If the UDC type was selected here is indicated the UDC code for this category.
• Category. The name of the subject or the key word.

Modify of delete categories is allowed only for the administrator of the library.

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