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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):
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):
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.
Users Managing Details
The users are managed through the following options:
- Insert new users.
- Modify users
- Delete users.
- Managing of loans.
a.1. Insert, modify and delete users. Through these group of options, the administrator of the library can add, modify or delete users of the library. The information stored for each user is the following:
- User's E-mail
- Name of the library
- Password
- Gender
- surnames and/or first name (surname/s, first name)
- Identity card number
- Age
- Address
- Telephone
- Province/County
Of these fields must be explained:
Regarding the user id (not visible in the form), by default, is a unique number for each user and the application generates this value, but, the system will support any other algorithm to produce the user id according with the library needs.
The users electronic mail, is a basic element, since it will be used as the username, not only for communications to the user, but as mean of the own user to receive the results of searchings in the application: list of references, the notes made on the books or list of definitions.
The library name is set by default.
The password, is a unique element generated for the user that will be used in conjunction with the username and the library name in the authentication.
a.2. Managing loans.
The loan control includes several functionalities:
- Search penalized users.
- Set or remove penalties.
- Register a loan.
- Register the returning of items.
Through the option search for penalized users, can be listed all those users under penalization for many reasons: overtime in returning the items, lost of books or other rule in the library. This search of penalized users can be performed using a group of filters such as the user's e-mail, surname/s and/or first name, the identity card number or the customer number.
Set or remove penalties. This option lets the library administrator to set or remove a penalty imposed to the users of the library.
Borrowing register. This option is used for register external loans and loans for read in the library. The number of books that can be borrowed for a single user is defined by the property set in the section related with the library configuration. The application will detect automatically whether a user is penalized or has reached the maximun number of items that can be held.
The returning of a book can be set as strict or flexible. If the strict mode is set, one user that returns a book after the returning time, automatically will be penalize, but if the flexible mode is set, that user could not be penalized (i.e.: he or she returns a book a day later because personal conditions).
All the loans are registered in the database maintaining a historic record with the basic information related to the loan, that is, the date, the item and the user. At any time we can retrieve statistical information, for example the most popular books, or the books that a concrete user has been held in a period of time.
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