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Ask Slashdot: Tech For Small Library Automation?
Kozz writes "I've recently been tapped as 'the tech guy' at my church where a group familiar with library automation wants to get digital with the relatively small catalog. Right now all the materials are simply on shelves, and people take an item down, fill out the paper card and drop it into a box, and we hope that people correctly calculate their own due dates and return the materials. We had a card catalog, but it went largely unused. We're looking for a complete solution for both administration and self-checkout; label printing, checkout receipts, and so on. Have any Slashdot readers found yourself in this position, and do you have recommendations based on your experiences?"
Keep it simple use access with a form
I don't know how small your library is but if it's large enough to warrant a card catalog then I'd suggest first putting all the books in the correct order and making sure the card catalog is accurate. dewey decimal system is your friend here.
Once you have that down and not before, you can set up a basic database for your books.
See if this works... first hit on google:
http://www.primasoft.com/pro_software/library_software_pro.htm
245 dollars for a complete package is dead cheap. This is a way better idea then programming your own access database. Do that if you're a bigger library or want customization. You probably don't care.
Look around for some sort of complete all in one package. I just posted the first hit on google for this stuff. They have demos... try it out. Apparently they have barcode compatibility which will make check in and out a lot simpler.
But all of that said... the books have to be in order and the card catalog has to be accurate. If people are going to procrastinate about organizing the books until the software is installed then do it backwards. But that's way more important then the database. A library with the books out of order is dysfunctional unless it's tiny.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
... what makes you think people will bother learning and using an even more complicated electronic system? Non univerisity library users (generally) tend to be the older generation. They don't have the ooo-shiny! approach to computers so if its a hassle they won't use it. End of.
I've never used it myself, but I once worked with a librarian who tried out Koha and found it pretty feature-full.
http://www.koha.org/
It might be a bit of overkill, but it has a large user-base and probably has every feature you could want.
3M SelfCheck System (BCS-Series) is what I've seen some libraries use. May not fit your situation cost wise, and definitally isn't FOSS.
As is often the case, embracing a technology completely to its logical end brings new advantages.
(*) This will make Jesus cry. Don't do it. Unless you live in a drought affected area. Then you should probably do it for the good of the neighbouring farmers, but he'll kick your ass when you hit the pearly gates.
I ask because the public library services pays a yearly fee and the small print in most books prohibits lending without permission. Just throwing that out there. I'd say go for it, but I lack moral guidance.
Tech isn't needed everywhere.
What's up with library automation? Is it good or is it whack?
The "Evergreen" library system is free and open source, and was initiated by the Georgia Public Library System in 2006, and is currently in use by over 850 libraries, including a "parish" library. You can check it out here: http://open-ils.org/about.php. The site also has a link to a showcase of libraries already running, and on the Internet. The "client" runs on Windows, Mac or Linux. I think the server runs on Linux.
Just put a webcam where it can see people taking and removing books and record low-rate video.
No one has to change what they do, but you have a record if a book is not returned.
The main advantage of this is that anybody can browse the library's collection anytime they want. On Sunday mornings they flash the URL up on the stage.
We're still using the paper checkout process though. The old ladies that run the library are 80+ years old, and are former librarians back when Eisenhower was in office. I figure one tech upgrade at a time is all they can handle.
He who laughs last is at 300 baud.
Why not use something as simple as possible? Keep the card system in place, and track it all using a collection manager like Tellico. I use Tellico for my personal library, which is probably about the size of the library you're managing. I'd say keep the card system in place - you're never going to get people to fill out online forms etc. And then use Tellico to answer the questions "What have I got?," "What's been checked out?" and "to Whom?" Seems like that's all you need at this stage.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
See also Integrated library system
I worked in a journalism college where we had cameras, batteries, all their accessories, and also computer equipment that could be checked out by students. It was a nightmare trying to keep track of it all on paper.
What I suggested was we get a barcode reader, and print out small barcodes and affix them to each item. Then we made a filemaker database of all the items, and all the students. Now all we have to do is scan the items and hit "complete" and it checks them out, gives us an overview of what we have and when things should be back, and automatically emails the students 2 days before the items are due back.
Really simple and pretty cheap to do. I think all in all we spent $150 on the reader and the paper we already had.
dont computerize it
I have used MediaMan in the past, and enjoyed what it brought to the table. http://www.imediaman.com/products/mediaman.html
It supports flagging books as loaned out to person X, etc. It can export the database as a website so people can hit a web page to know if a book is in or out, etc.
They have a server product, but I've never used it.
I'm not associated with the project, just a user of it.
Other similar media organizers probably exist too, depending on how "formal" you want the experience to be, and if other people will touch the computer or not (ie you will enter the information into the computer once a day or something).
Search for Koha, it seems like the 'professional' tool for the job, if you want to go that far.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
how about a nice Oracle license to go with it? as part of this special slashdot offer, this amazing software can be yours for the low, low price of only $4999.99. But wait! There's more. If you call now.... you will get not only a one hundred, but a two hundred seat license! That's more than enough for any small church! Act fast, this offer is only good for the next 24 hours!
If your library is small and you have no tracking what-so-ever installed, or only trust-based tracking, Delicious Library might be the right thing. It's a personal solution focussing on private collections, but it is very fun and easy to use, supports barcode scanning with simple webcams and retrieves its item/katalog data via the web by scraping amazon and other sources when adding items, so you'll save yourself the hassle of data entry.
Even if you use a different solution in the end, the data retrieval system might be worth looking at, to save yourself data-entry headaches.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Every book a barcode and every usercard a barcode. The only thing people has to do is scanning their usercard first and then the books they lend. When they return their books you do not even need to scan the usercard. It is the system our local library uses and it is a quite big one so it should work for a small one too.
"Tech for a Small Liberation Army". %-)
I volunteer in medium size church library (~10,000 books and CDs). We were in the same situation about 12 years ago. A friend of mine wrote a program in VB. It covers everything you are asking for. He's a contract programmer. I know he has sold a few copies to other church and school libraries. Not sure how much he charges. Contact him and he can probably send you a demo. You can make your own categories, print reciepts, print library cards, bar codes, etc. Give him a call.
http://www.infinitysystems.biz/index.html
Since when do you need faith to *not* believe something? Why would you believe anything until it has been proven to be so?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
If you're creating a custom solution, the Dymo Labelwriter series of label printers with their continuous receipt paper is great for reminder slips. I have used them in many applications.
...Delicious Library might be the right thing...
Seconded. If you're looking for something really, really simple and easy to use for people that are not technically expert and you don't mind shelling out for an old Mac Mini and $35 for the software; this is a really solid choice. From a usability point of view it simply blows everything else out of the water.
Atheism is often described as "the belief that there is no god". If you feel that the whole question is irrelevant or unknowable then agnostic is a better discription.
Looks like someone needs to take Philosophy 101. Scientific proof is available for few things in the human experience. Most of the time one is forced to rely on suppositions. While continual self-examination is valuable, there's as much support for classical theism as for most issues of epistemology.
We have a small one room library, and we use two programs by booksys.com. They are ezCat and Concourse. I don't use the software personally, but the staff seems happy enough with them.
You state: "Scientific proof is available for few things in the human experience.".
Really?
Like e.g. the entire corpus of experimental physics, astronomy, biology, etc.
You do need to take Basic Science for Freshmen 101...
It would be perhaps best avoiding to repeate rather stale arguments used by a bunch of illiterate theists. They carry no weight.
The Force actually is with me.
Get involved with code4lib http://code4lib.org/about and ask on their mailing list. I see tech solutions have already been suggested, Koha, Evergreen - also look at Blacklight http://projectblacklight.org/, but the knowledge in the code4lib group will be invaluable.
fak3r.com
I used to run a shipboard library while I was in the Navy and used http://www.collectorz.com/book/ It is relatively inexpensive feature filled downloads cover art so patrons of the library can See what is in the library. I don't reccommend this for anything over about 1500 books but it sounds like your library may be smaller than that. I thiink you will be pleased with it.
You're making several inaccurate presumptions. First, non-academic library users do come from all generations. Second, electronic systems are not more complicated than card catalogs from the user perspective -- most libraries find that general use of the library goes up when an electronic catalog is established, due to their making it easier to find materials. As for the topic at hand, if the group is familiar with library automation, I presume that some of them may also be familiar with cataloging enough to be able to make good use of something like Evergreen -- it scales down to small libraries quite well. Delicious Library sounds like a good idea but it can't handle MARC records like you can download from the Library of Congress for many books (or using the Z39.50 protocol, from many other institutions including research libraries), and I've found it to be rather weak on authority control. Evergreen and similar will allow for proper copy cataloguing from LC or other major libraries instead of just Amazon, which Delicious seems to use.
Our public library uses: http://www.tlcdelivers.com - It's probably more than you are looking for, but it offers I'm pretty sure everything you mention.
Buy a old Tape library robot from ebay, instead of tapes make it hold books. now you have a "library in a vending machine" and it will keep those churchies from stealing books or keeping them for months past the return date.
Bonus points if you make it look like a REDBOX rental vending machine.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My only experience with Library software was with Follett's package in a school library with about 8000 items. I do not recommend Follett. It runs fine and user complaints were minimal. As I recall, the database self destructed a couple of times, but reviving the DB was fairly straightforward. On the other hand installation and upgrade were unpleasant. The maintenance instructions verged on incomprehensible and one upgrade required rebuilding the entire data base -- a process that turned out to be appallingly slow. I had to wait for a vacation to do that. And from I'm told it is expensive. Fortunately, it didn't come out of my budget.
On my last visit to our local library, the librarian -- who was not a fan of Follett either -- told me that they had just upgraded from Follett to an open source product of some sort thereby saving a bundle of money. She was quite enthused about the new software. I didn't have a lot of time, but I did look at the screens a user would encounter and they looked fine. It looks like the program they changed to is Koha. Here's a link to their catalog on line http://brownell.kohavt.org/
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
There are a ton of software solutions for small libraries out there:
http://www.capterra.com/library-automation-software
Evergreen and Koha are definitely overkill for what you need. The paid ones are usually pretty reasonable, based on your user base and come with support. If you just want free and can handle the tech yourself, http://obiblio.sourceforge.net/ has not been updated in a while but should have all the basic tools you need.
-Librarian
Why would you believe anything until it has been proven to be so?
People generally believe what you tell them - evaluation of what you tell them only comes afterwards. There have been scientific studies investigating that - if you bombard people with statements and don't give them time to analyze them, they'll file them in the "true" category.
That behavior is basically a requirement - given that we start out knowing very little, we rely on our parent's telling us things which are true. As a result most children believe the religion they are brought up in - because they assume they are told the truth.
Of course their parents believe they tell them the truth, though statistically it has to be wrong in the majority of cases. (Most religious beliefs are mutually exclusive and there is no majority believing in a single religion.)
Anyway, you really need to make the effort to re-evaluate something if you had already accepted it as true.
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the MARC cataloguing protocol,
which seems to be the standard at all large libraries,
in particular the Library of Congress eg http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/,
which has a lot of online help in the use of the system.
If I were in charge of a library, I would set up a system
to enable someone to read the ISBN number of a new book with a barcode reader,
and then automatically get (and store) the MARC record from the Library of Congress.
As previous posters have mentioned, ILS software has been done to death, and it's complex enough that it's consolidated down to probably half a dozen to a dozen serious products. There are a couple of FOSS products out there and several that are not. In my experience, the ones that are not are more full-featured and require less configuration and less day-to-day management. I have a preferred ILS vendor I'd recommend (Innovative Interfaces), but they're almost certainly far too expensive (and far too powerful) for a small church library. Personally, I'd contact OCLC and see if they have a low-cost remote solution.
----------
Something cleverI'll third that vote, delicious makes it dead simple. it uses the built in bar codes for scanning, plus you can publish the available books on a website.
What do you mean by "proven"?
You have an implicit faith that this term is meaningful.
Really, if you're going to only believe things that are proven, you should believe nothing at all, because everything you imagine to be "proven" ultimately relies on some assumption that is not "proven" and moreover cannot be "proved".
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Technology for sake of technology is stupid. Are you having theft? Are people abusing the system?
When a church -- or other small organization's -- library falls into disorder, it's usually because the little old lady, who served as the volunteer librarian since she was middle aged, has gone to her reward.
Unfortunately, no amount of automation can make up for this. Your system -- no matter how advanced, primitive, simple or whatever -- really requires an owner. Without this, it will fall into disorder just as the previous one did and you'll be back to square one.
If you can't find a new volunteer librarian, don't do it. You'll spend most of your time cataloging, and then entropy will take over.
I am not a crackpot.
You seem to be the unreasonable, with a lack of sense and reality. Neither atheism or theism have any particularly strong claim to truth. Both require aspects of faith. Atheism requires faith that there isn't some power beyond our comprehension and ability to examine, and theism requires there is.
Lemme see if I get this. Theisim requires faith. Faith to believe in something for which there is no real evidence.
Atheism, requires faith. Faith to NOT believe in something for which there is no evidence.
Nope, still don't get it, please explain further.
The cards are a good solution, maybe it need some enhancement.
Check if my proposition fits
Let assume you lend books that have to be returned in a week
Grab 4 boxes and label them 1 to 4, make a cut on then to resemble an old mailbox.
Buy some card plastic holders (roughly one per book).
Buy some paper cards (2 per book)
In both cases buy some extra holders and cards for good meassure.
Attach with glue a holder to each book
fill a card with the book data, title, ISBN, dewey code etc.
put the card on the book's holder
mark some cards with a big 1, some with a Big 2 and so on, one bunch
per mailbox.
now we are ready to business.
Put the mailbox marked one in the library, put a stack of card marked "one" above the mailbox.
Auto lending process
The "customer" picks their book of choice, take the book's card out of the
holder and replaces it for one taken from the stack above the mailbox.
The customer puts the book's card in a plastic holder along with his library card
(If she can have more than one book, give her more than one id card)
Put the holder inside mailbox
Returnig books
Look for the book's card in the mailbox indicated in it's "LABEL CARD",
exchange them, return book to shelf.
Return library id to "customer"
Controlling due books
When you reach end of week one
Take the remaining holders of mailbox one, these are due books
use the library id to ask for returns
put the holders back into the mailbox, they should stay there until returned.
Put mailbox number 2 with it's 2 labeled cards
What books are out the door?
Those whose cards are in the boxes
Who have these books?
The people whose id is along the book card
Atheism is often described as "the belief that there is no god". If you feel that the whole question is irrelevant or unknowable then agnostic is a better discription.
What if you believe the whole concept to be preposterous, and hold it up as peer to all of the other infinite amount of preposterous things that you could spend your whole life thinking up and still not convince people that it is silly to believe in things for which there are no evidence?
I typed that whole thing in one breath!
What do you mean by "proven"?
I simply mean sufficient evidence or argument for the truth of a proposition. Lots of things can be proven.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I happened to have scanned my modest book library here (~500 items) with GCstar, which works pretty well. It can download covers and details from Amazon and so on, based on the ISBN (although the latest version in Debian fails to do that properly for some reason). Before deciding on GCstar, I had evaluated multiple solutions, including Koha and custom-based solutions, none of which being simple enough for my uses, which made me settle on GCstar... The full details of the evaluation are in the Koumbit wiki.
Since then I have started looking into e-book readers, and family have pointed me to Calibre, a e-book management software. Now it's not necessarily very good with real libraries, but since I am likely to get such a device in the near future (and therefore accumulate digital books), this looks like a very good choice, especially since it seems to have a more complete interface (especially for batch entering ISBN numbers) and a more robust engine to talk with Amazon and friends. It also seems to be better maintained and have a stronger community.
I am not sure that is so helpful in your case, but I thought I could chime in since, well, I have a small library and most of the work is automated. :) Just need to punch in the ISBN number and choose who to lease the book to (something I will do in a custom field in Calibre). A "standard" barcode reader (that behaves like a keyboard, basically) and judicious use of keyboard shortcuts should do the trick if you are really concerned about speed.
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
You could type the ISBN into a label using a bar code font and use a simple inventory control program with a bar code scanner, or you could go the whole library software hog and work the problem to death.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I completely miss the point of believing that something is or is not if there is no observation or other hint whatsoever to support either claim. You can call that agnostic, but I think it's just common sense. You don't burden yourself with the question of whether other random things exist or not, so why would you question the existence of god?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
>Really, if you're going to only believe things that are proven, you should believe nothing at all, because everything you imagine to be "proven" ultimately relies on some assumption that is not "proven" and moreover cannot be "proved".
Now this is a fine example of the kind of logic that an apologist must resort to in order to set the groundwork for proof that there is a god. Basically it sets you up for the next argument which will tell you that the existence of a god, given that nothing can actually be proven or disproven, is equally likely. Which is bullshit. The existence of a god is still as near to impossible that anything can get even if you accept that nothing can be proven.
Obviously, the library software and data needs to be backed up. Nothing new there.
But who is going to back you up? Whatever is installed needs to allow for the fact that one day you wont be there when it breaks. You are on vacation, or have moved away or something.
Remember KISS.
I'd give BiblioteQ (http://biblioteq.sf.net) a try.
There are tons of great ILS systems out there that were created specifically for church and small school libraries. A few years ago I worked with a small collection (aprox. 3k titles) and went with Surpass (http://www.surpasssoftware.com/index.html). What I liked most about it was the smooth copy cataloging system that was built in. I didn't have to manually catalog many of the books, just barcode them. Good luck!
I'm not talking about science. I'm talking about any proof. Nobody goes around questioning whether all sorts of random things do or do not exist. So why would you even consider the existence of god until someone actually shows some evidence or argument to support his existence?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Excellent question, and many good comments already. I would think about how much time you want to spend on it, and how dependent you want them to be on you, if the world keeps going after the current end-time prophesies :-)
I am on the board of a small Christian teachers college which had its own catalog for years. After a lot of research/thinking by the Librarian we switched to an OPALS hosted solution, supported by a small Canadian company - that was important for us since we're in Canada. Pretty happy with it after a couple of years. No server, no backups, no securing a website, fairly simple customization, reasonably small annual fee, and we get our entire catalog on CD twice a year, for backup, and in case something were to happen to the company (a regular occurrence in the ILS business, see http://www.librarytechnology.org/automationhistory.pl - a good site!)
For OPALS, start at: http://opalsinfo.net/
But that's what puberty is for, right? To re-evaluate the things you have accepted as true so far in your life. The transition of a child to an adult largely is exactly that: determining your own values, sorting out how you think the world works and defining the sort of person you are. I get that as a child it is very useful to blindly believe what your parents and teachers tell you, including stuff about God or Santa. But once you enter adulthood, you start to "think for yourself". So even if your parents never told you Santa doesn't exist, you should figure it out by yourself by then. Beyond that phase, I really don't get why you would believe anything for which there is no clear evidence or argument.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
From past comments on slashdot I don't think many slashdotters ever found themselves in your position (belonging to a church)
For a modestly-sized library, Tellico could fit your needs.
I cowrote an issue of Library Technology Reports on librarians' satisfaction with their automation systems: http://www.alatechsource.org/taxonomy/term/106/librarians-assessments-of-automation-systems-survey-results-2007-2010 This is based on Marshall Breeding's yearly satisfaction survey (he was the other author, and you can see his survey results at http://librarytechnology.org/). So I recommend you refer to those for more details on libraries in comparable situations.
If you're comfortable with running open source stuff -- and your church will have a succession plan when/if you move on -- you can definitely use Koha. It's rough around the edges in some places (which is why you need to be comfortable) but it has a ton of features.
However, it's probably also overkill for what you need, and requires your church to commit to having the expertise on hand indefinitely, which may not be realistic. You might find that OPALS is more to your liking: http://www.mediaflex.net/showcase.jsp?record_id=52 It's a solid ILS for small organizations, also has high satisfaction ratings. In my experience simpler to use than Koha (though I've also spent more time on the back end of Koha, so maybe I was just doing easier things with OPALS). It's open source, but you can also get it as a hosted service if that's within your budget, so it might be more sustainable. That link has a demo site if you want to test it out.
Hope this helps.
Andromeda Yelton
http://andromedayelton.com
Ah, more concepts that you have implicit faith in: "sufficient", "evidence" and "truth".
You assume that there is "truth"; that there is some universal and objective reality. Then you assume that you can discover facts about this truth using "evidence". But of course you can't gather all the relevant evidence to establish those facts, so you assume a third concept of "sufficient" to describe your threshold for establishing a fact.
None of these things can be proved to have any relationship to reality at all. Therefore, you must have faith in them.
This idea might offend you, so I must hasten to point out that I'm not accusing you of being in any way religious. There is a distinction between faith and religion. For example, you have faith in the naturalistic assumptions that lead to what you call "proof", but this does not mean you have faith in anything else.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
If you're just lending books out of your library, then a number of the solutions mentioned above may work well. If you're also (thinking about) lending tools or other goods from your lending library, then you might want to check out Local Tools. It's a web-based lending library management system.
According to the features page, it will calculate due dates, late fees, send out email reminders, track donations, and more.
It looks like perfectly ordinary logic to me. You are the one ascribing theological meaning to it.
Proof always relies on assumptions, and if the assumptions are invalid, so is the proof. Naturalism is an assumption about reality. Don't say "I only believe in things that can be proved" unless you want to see that assumption deconstructed.
If you want to argue with people about theology and the tricks used by those nasty "apologists", then I'm sorry, I can't be bothered to oblige you. Please try over there.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Writing your own app and Khoa aren't where I would start as they seem like overkill. Library Thing (http://www.librarything.com/) has lending features and would probably work for small community programs like that. If managing the collection is a problem consider using a barcode reader or a mobile app that reads barcodes.
Don't say "I only believe in things that can be proved" unless you want to see that assumption deconstructed.
I did not say that, what I said was that even if you accept the premise that nothing can be proven, the argument for the existence of a god remains extremely weak.
If you want to argue with people about theology and the tricks used by those nasty "apologists", then I'm sorry, I can't be bothered to oblige you.
So, you are posting... why?
Like suggestions from two previous commenters, investigate the Koha and/or Evergreen Library systems which work just as well on your
small church library as large organization.
Evergreen = http://open-ils.org/ Koha = www.koha.org/
Don't be fooled by the stupid recommendations of using Microsoft Excel, which first of all is not a "database", has no
transaction process - meaning cannot record a book out/in, etc,and won't work even after 1000 hours of programming
by an "excel expert". These simpleton PC band-aid solutions are all that many average computer users know about.
W. Anderson
wanderson@kimalcorp.org
I did not say that, what I said was that even if you accept the premise that nothing can be proven, the argument for the existence of a god remains extremely weak.
Never said you did. I was merely restating my actual argument, since you seem to have assumed it was actually "the groundwork" for some /r/atheism-style straw man argument for the existence of God. And you have told everyone else here that my logic is somehow flawed ("the kind of logic that an apologist must resort to") though of course you never say how.
I think that I should defend myself against accusations of this sort since I use my real name here. But I'm not going to get into actual arguments about the existence for God, because that would just be a waste of everyone's time.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
And can hold up to 11GB of user data, more than plenty enough for a small church library.
Naturalism an assumption? What the hell? It's backed up by tons of evidence. It's the theory that best fits our experience. Arguing about his mis-use of the term "proven" does nothing to invalidate his point. Believing in things without evidence is no way to run a railroad!
You might want to mention that it only runs on Apple Mac.
But I'm not going to get into actual arguments about the existence for God, because that would just be a waste of everyone's time.
No, merely attack the very foundation of all argument, step in and state that nothing can be proven. And walk away passively.
I think you've done a pretty good job of wasting everyone's time. Give yourself a pat on the back.
I believe you would fall under the first sentence of the GP. That is still a belief that such a thing does not exist, and not an uncertainty.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
in our library I implemented the free PMB library system, running on php/mysql. www.sigb.net
Since when do you need faith to *not* believe something? Why would you believe anything until it has been proven to be so?
Seems like many people are brain-wired that way. Most of the atheists believe in Apocalyptic Global Warming, which to me is just as whacko as the Apocalyptic Christian Fundamentalists or the Apocalyptic Muslim Shiites. Normally I'd say that the whackos have every right to be whacko as long as they don't pose a hazard or an excessive resource drain on society as a whole, but these Apocalypse embracing religions really are getting to be a hazard and resource drain.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
We implemented a small church library using BookCAT (http://www.fnprg.com/bookcat/) . Price is 39.95 and the technical support has been great. Knows ISBN and has a checkout feature and can do LC or Dewey
Best fits *your* experience. Please do not assume that you know anyone else's experience.
Consider a ants in an iron box (say, floating over the ground by a magnetic field) that cannot be opened.
(1) The outside of the box is slick, so the ant's can't stick their feet to it, they'll fall off.
(2) There is a surface below the box, that stands, and is similarly slick, so the ants cant
Now we have two variables. An ant eater at the bottom of the surface below the box, and a hole at the bottom of the box. This hole is slick, and deeper than an ant is long, so the ant cant peer out, if it goes in the hole, it slides out, and onto the ramp, then onto the surface below, where the anteater waits.
Now, let's say the ant eater can 'smell' how old an ant is, and it only likes to eat younger ants.
If the hole does not exist, your described view makes sense. Who cares? There's no way those ants will interact with the ant eater, if it does exist.
If the hole exists, the ants in the box cannot know about the ant eater for certain, but should they leave the box, if it exists, it may certainly affect them. Now they have the risk - to leave the box young, and explore and outside world with many more resources (and potentially an ant eater), or wait in safety until later?
One theme I've heard is, "I could be wrong in two ways, one would leave me having wasted some time, and the other would leave me globally screwed."
Mind you, along with that, faith in god (and even attending a church) does not necessarily correspond to faith in the church.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I don't think you quite get what the GP said, or you have some very interesting ideas.
There is a difference between believing something doesn't occur, and having uncertainty about it's occurrence.
There was a time people believed that plate tectonics and continental drift absolutely did not exist. That was a belief in such a "not", and even with a lot of evidence towards the contrary.
Faith is simply a belief in a concept (including a concept that another is wrong) or idea, particularly without sufficient evidence for its accuracy.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
FTFY
Agnosticism, is a lack of faith - a state of uncertainty, where you don't believe or disbelieve in either. Either side, both theism and atheism, requires some faith.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
"merely attack the very foundation of all argument"
Care to clarify where I did this?
You're an immobile computer, remember?
That is the most ridiculous description of Pascal's Wager I've ever heard.
I am a librarian, have worked with university and large urban public libraries on down to informal church libraries. It sounds like you're talking about a collection of 1000 books or fewer, and don't anticipate an increase of an order of magnitude or more.
For that size and the informal use you describe, all you really need is a shelf list. ILSes have their place, but sometimes handwritten circulation cards --or even a sign-out sheet-- are really the most appropriate way to go when you can't afford to hire an actual librarian. I think that in your case, even labels would be overkill. LOC and Dewey Decimal have their place, but subject order arrangement is just overkill for under 30' of shelf space. Keep a shelf list, and shelve the books in alphabetical order, either by title (sans "The" or "A"), or by first author's/editor's last name. Physically "face" them --that is, align the edges of the books to the outer edge of the shelf-- and you'll be able to quickly tell what areas have recently been perused.
A calendar circulation system to track checkouts and returns will almost certainly be actually more useful for you than any catalog feature. You can even get away with just setting up a shared google calendar: just give calendar edit rights to all authorized "librarians", create a new entry for every item circulated, set the date to the return date, and name the patron and either the book title, or the ISBN if your collections' titles are ambiguous.
That's the most efficient way, IMO. If you users still have an ILS itch, scratch it with Koha. And for heaven's sake, use RFID tags instead of barcodes.
Yes! Been using it for years for 2k+ books and a few hundred DVDs and CDs. Easy, cheap, and easy.
Libdata has a small system for Churches and small libraries. They do not advertize it on their website, but it is available - and only costs $150/year - including website! It is very easy to use and allows self checkout and in. You can customize your website with featured books. contact them at sales at Libdata.com. They give free demos - so you can try it before buying it.
https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=WEB4LIB
The members represent libraries of shapes and sizes.
I don't know how small your library is but if it's large enough to warrant a card catalog then I'd suggest first putting all the books in the correct order and making sure the card catalog is accurate.
Speaking as someone who volunteered for several library projects - that's not how you convert a library over. For your database, you process books as they go through circulation. Ie, book returned? It goes into the "enter and re-shelve" pile. Or, alternatively, you at least initially enter the book when it's checked out so you're tracking it with the new system.
This prioritizes the most popular books, assures the highest & quickest conversion in terms of transaction volume, and thus the quickest efficiency jump (which frees up time for dealing with the other books.) Otherwise, you'll spend years dealing with books mostly not entered into the system.
You can deal with low-circulation-volume books by pulling them shelf-at-a-time. If the library is small enough, simply re-shelve them in a new location. If the library is more than a few shelves, then tag the books in some fashion (the various color dots and whatnot you used to see on books in various libraries were, in fact, how the library was tracking this sort of thing.
Please help metamoderate.
A proper library automation system can save considerable time on an ongoing basis and allow you to actually do what you describe with minimal overall effort.
Such a system would have NISO Z39.50 protocol client support for downloading and working with machine readable cataloguing, MARC, records well catalogued at another library for copy cataloguing to populate the records of an automated library system. Downloading records over Z39.50 directly from most libraries with Z39.50 servers, including the Library of Congress, is free and does not generally involve copyright issues as cataloguing records are almost entirely mere collections of facts prepared according to cataloguing rules.
Such a system would also have a degree of granular permissions to support automated self-checkout with a bar code scanner without also giving every user permission to erase the database. Self-checkout systems are often currently assumed to be RFID based, however, systems using a bar code scanner which are much cheaper to implement should be supported for self-checkout. The cheapest solution is to buy sheets of simple bar codes and obtain a used bar code scanner on Ebay. Using product bar codes already printed on material may have inconsistent encoding and non-unique numbers.
Check the support and possible extra price for such features in any candidate system.
1. Set Up Work.
Real work is often required for anything worth having.
Some minimal assistance from a professional librarian, who may be a member of your church or otherwise available in the community, would be invaluable help at least to start. Most library automation systems support configuration options designed for use by people who are not professional librarians but such support would not negate the great value of obtaining some minimal assistance of a professional librarian at the outset. Check the support for non-professional configuration.
The complexity of setting up such software may entail either paying a library support company to set up the software; or at least a few days of time from someone sufficiently familiar with Unix administration willing to read the documentation and seek answers on the mailing lists to set up a free software library automation system without using a professional support company. Some set up complexity might be avoided by using an implementation hosted by a library support company but that would involve a long term support contract which could be avoided with sufficient initial set up effort.
2. Lists of Library Automation Systems.
There is no single source of library automation system options which is comprehensive and up to date.
A library automation system is referred to as an integrated library system, ILS, in the US and a library management system, LMS, in many other English language countries.
2.1. Library of Congress List.
The Library of Congress maintains a list of automation systems which function with MARC records which includes some systems which are not comprehensive library automation systems, http://www.loc.gov/marc/marcsysvend.html .
2.2. Library Technology Guides List.
Library Technology Guides maintains a list of library automation system companies. Library automation companies. - http://www.librarytechnology.org/companies.pl . - In Library technology guides / maintained by Marshall Breeding. - http://www.librarytechnology.org/ .
2.3. Library Journal Guide.
Library Journal publishes an annual overview of the library automation system market. Automation Marketplace 2011 : The New Frontier / by Marshall Breeding. - In Library Journal. - April 1, 2011 - http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889533-264/automation_marketplace_2011_the_new.html.csp .
2.4.
Since it is a church, I assume all of the books will be placed in the fiction section, right? If not, you're doing it wrong.
Check out http://www.collectorz.com/book/
$50, catalog, search, lists, sort, entry by isbn or barcode scanner, loan management, publish to web, etc.
I've used it for my home library (1500+ technical/scientific books, 15,000+ fiction books) for several years, and it keeps getting better with each release.
I am a sometimes user of a simple library database, at a volunteer organisation, that was developed in Claris Filemaker Pro 2.0 v1. This is "as old as the hills", but you might be able to find a free download! (Contact me if you'd like me to get the source files from that organisation; that might make building the application easier.)
Otherwise, LibraryThing.com looks fine, and participating there will allow lots of people to know what religious publications are about.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
I saw a self checkout system from these guys at my local library and was amazed: http://www.gisinfosystems.com/
Just put the books you want to check out on a platform, press the Check Out button on the touch screen, and that's it. Wirelessly checked out in about 10 seconds. Every book scanned and a receipt printed.
I was just looking at these a couple of days ago... they don't have the range I needed, but would work great for books.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9875
A short video on Youtube about these....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ioDBOOAFvM
Have fun!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
... Koha is Maori for 'treasure', and this free software is certainly a treasure for libraries that don't want to spend a fortune on software.
The Maori for treasure is ‘taonga'. Koha is simply a gift.
Why wouldn't observations or logical conclusions have no relation with reality?
That said, I don't think in a single truth exists per se. And since ongoing progress is made in the form of observations and reason, new evidence and arguments present themselves continuously. So even "the truth" is really "the current truth".
But I do think it is reasonable to assume things backed up by more evidence or argument are more true than things that are backed up by less evidence or argument. And I fail to see why you would accept something as true when no evidence or argument is available at all.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I've never heard of that. Thank you for the reference.
Although, reading the Wikipedia article, he said there is much to be gained if God exists, and little to be gained from wagering God doesn't exist. I'd argue that there is a lot to be gained from wagering that God doesn't exist, proportionally speaking. All choices are valid, and even if you do wager God does exist, there are so many possible views. My involves that God should be worthy of us, and deciding if a rule is from God or the church based on that... (and hence, how important it is). But that is a huge digression.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Well, it's common sense that they would. But the argument is more technical than that. It's about the nature of proof.
What do you think "proof" is? Proof must be contingent on "the current truth" actually being true, right? That is, proof is not a statement "Y = true", but an implication, "X implies Y". The assumptions (X) are contingent on "the current truth" at the time when the proof is produced. If these later turn out to be false, the proof remains true, because "X implies Y" is true if "X = false".
In order for "proof" to make sense as a concept you must accept that "the current truth" and "the truth" are not the same thing at all. They are not even the same sort of thing. One is based on observations, the other is reality. There are many possible "current truths". There is one "truth".
It takes faith to assert that your assumptions are so good that "the current truth" is near enough to "the truth" that the difference is unimportant, because nothing about this metaphysical relationship can be proved. It's beyond the reach of any experiment - it is the domain of philosophy and religion. So you see, you do still need faith, even for the things you think are proved by sufficient evidence, because you need to have faith that the evidence is truly sufficient, and that's not something that can itself be proved.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Cool, thanks for sharing this stuff.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I use http://obiblio.sourceforge.net/
You can print barcodes and labels for your books, issue cards, track users and who has what checked out. Even a web interface to search books. Slick really. And you can get a cheap cue cat barcode scanner off ebay to use with it. It's in PHP and easy to customize and understand.
No it isn't, Agnosticism is a belief about reality and the nature of knowledge that some things (usually the nature/existance of god) are unknowable.
No. Atheism is not belief in no god. Atheism is the lack of belief in god. I can clearly say that I do not believe in god without taking a position on the knowability of god.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
http://biblioteq.sourceforge.net/
Is an open source library management suite. I'm using in to catalog my book collection at home. Can also be used for keeping track of CD's and DVD's.
Excerpt from their main page:
BiblioteQ strives to be a complete and thorough library management suite. The application is supported on numerous platforms, including FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris, and Windows. Installers are available for OS X, Unix, and Windows.
For some categories, BiblioteQ provides a mechanism for querying the Library of Congress, or any other Z39.50-capable system, via the standard Z39.50 protocol; thus simplifying the data-entry process.
As for database connectivity, BiblioteQ supports both PostgreSQL and SQLite database engines.
I went through this a few years ago. The church is a medium sized (5,000 - 6,000 members) church in Silicon Valley. The Children's Department library had been on the honor system. A decision was made to automate it. After a lot of research and talking to people we went with SurpassCL (http://www.surpasssoftware.com/surpass-cl.html)
It was slick and worked well. Getting all the media into the system was quite easy. Eventually they decided not to have a Librarian available during check-out times and went to Surpass's self-checkout system. That worked OK too.
Finally we went back to the honor system with little slips of paper. After all, we're a church. If someone wants to keep a DVD, it isn't the end of the world.
I thought Surpass was a little pricey, but the quality of the product is really high. Most of the software I found is *extremely* ugly and non-intuitive. Be sure to get hands on with whatever you choose. More importantly, get your librarian hands on with whatever you choose. I have no problem with ResourceMate, but it was too much for the part time library lady.
And don't discount PaperOS too fast. The licensing fees for your automation software will pay to replace a lot of copies of King George and the Ducky.
(Now where did I leave that hairbrush?)