Library computer system
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A library computer system is the software used to catalog, track circulation (where appropriate) and inventory a library's assets. It is intended for home, church, private enterprise or other small to medium sized collections. Larger, First World libraries will typically use an integrated library system to manage the more complex activities such as acquisitions and the reference interview.[citation needed]
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[edit] Software criteria
[edit] Distributed software vs. web service
Library computer systems tend to fall into two offerings: software to be purchased or a service. With distributed software the customer installs the application on their own hardware and is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the application and the data. Customers who subscribe to a service merely upload data to the vendor's remote server via the internet and may pay a periodic fee to access their data.
[edit] Data entry assistance based on ISBN
Many applications can reduce a major portion of manual data entry by populating data fields based upon the entered ISBN using MARC standards technology via the internet.
[edit] Barcode scanning and printing
With most any software, users can eliminate some manual entry by using a barcode scanner. But some software is designed, or can be extended with an additional module, to integrate scanner functionality. While most software vendor provide some type of scanner integration, not all will print labels with barcodes.
[edit] See also
- Integrated library system for large libraries