EnTRy 7 : Discuss on the needs of evaluating a library software before you decide to purchase it for your library - what do you look for when you do the evaluation?

Software selection is not an easy task but selections should always be reflective and become a major part to make sure that the software selected for using in the library are in good condition. From the selection is to make sure that it’s will achieve the library mission which to provide good service for the patrons and users. Library management software used to manage everything from home libraries to small, large and huge public libraries. 

If I become head of the selection library system, various criteria that I will describe and evaluate to make sure that all the software selected are can achieved the library mission, the evaluation commonly covered based on

                   1. How it matches the library’s requirements.

   o   All the system selected need to meet the library requirement or service   that library provide because the system intently is to help and to reduce the time for operation
2. Product Quality

   o   The system need to have a good quality to make sure that the library  also achieved their standard required
3.  Cost

   o   Cost are the major issues in the selection because for the library side, we need to make sure that the budget are enough to buy the software and the others thing is also need to consider a cost include after purchase like the damage happen, staff training and other
4. Function

   o   The functions of the software also need to consider because if I buy the same function that library already have, it will make library lost for their budget. Also I need to make sure that the function provided are can totally been used in the library.
5.  Staff Training and Support Service

   o   I also need to consider the support service availability that the library software have because it will make the crucial time like the error happen can be solve in the fastest time. Also the staff training that the vendor of the library system provide for my staff

Other thing that I need to consider is about:

•   Is easy to use (not necessarily easy to learn)
• Offers constructive feedback (both positive and negative)
•  Enhances content through electronic presentation (very important)
• Provides instructions or on-screen help that is clear and useful
• Provides a tangible product

And in the same time need to avoid software that,

• Has large amounts of text on the screen
• Does not allow the user to control sound levels, timing, or other intrusive features
•  Presents content in a violent, racist, sexist, or condescending fashion
• Does not significantly add to a user’s knowledge base in a meaningful way
• Is little more than an automated workbook (after all, workbooks are much cheaper and easier to maintain)
• Repeats exaggerated or lengthy graphics displays that have little to do with the advertised content

EnTRy 6 : Discuss on how useful an Integrated Library System (ILS) as a Management Information System (MIS)

Toward of uses of Information Technology (IT) today, all required field are need to change their traditional ways of operation involve to the System that will help them much better for their organization. It also happen in the library which call that Integrated Library System(ILS) where we knows that in house of library itself have a lot of operation involve in different department and service such as loan books, tagging, book organization, registration of patrons and others. Integrated library system is basically is used to automate basic processes required for library management.  Typically, an ILS is built around databases used to track titles and items in the collections and other databases used to manage patron data. Each patron and item has a unique ID in the database that allows the ILS to track its activity. This different database and system will be integrated by each other to become a complete system for library.

Others definition for ILS is an enterprise resource planning system for a library, used to track items owned, orders made, bills paid, and patrons who have borrowed. An ILS usually comprises a relational database, software to interact with that database, and two graphical user interfaces (one for patrons, one for staff). Most ILS system functions into discrete programs called modules, each of them integrated with a unified interface. Examples of modules might include:

§  acquisitions (ordering, receiving, and invoicing materials)

§  cataloging (classifying and indexing materials)

§  circulation (lending materials to patrons and receiving them back)

§  serial (tracking magazine and newspaper holdings)

Below is an example the operation or service that involved in the library, in the traditional ways it all is done manually and just some of them are done in the system database. But today, with the highly rate of technology uses, all the operation that involved in the library will be integrated by each other’s to make sure that the operation in library can be run smoothly. From the first time patrons enter in the library until he or she going out from the library now are need to me integrated.

Larger libraries use an ILS to order and acquire, receive and invoice, catalog, circulate, track and shelve materials. Smaller libraries, such as those in private homes or non profit organizations  often forgo the expense and maintenance required to run an ILS, and instead use a library computer system.

Commonly the main objectives of ILS are to build a system can be receive an input and also a service to the patrons. By using the ILS, there have many enhancements that the librarian can done for their library to make sure that their library have a new generation of interfaces. Ever-growing dissatisfaction with older model catalogs has mandated new library interfaces incorporating Web 2.0 features such as RSS feeds, user tagging, and reviews. Behind-the-scenes ILS operation matters less than the patron's experience. This new genre of ILS enables libraries to make drastic improvements to their online presence in also make their operation to be less in time uses and cost.

By the new interfaces attempt to provide a single point of access to all library content, including OPAC, Cataloguing, Tagging and others. But the patrons need to register with library before will have an authentication to access all the content provided. By existing of ILS also will make the libraries to break away from outdated interfaces and deliver library content and services on a par with other destinations on the web, like relevancy-ranked search results, faceted navigation, visual appeal through book jacket images, and good graphic design.

The ILS also have a Managing of e-content in the library,  Library investments in e-content continue to rise in tandem with patron expectations for immediate access to authoritative information. Link resolvers and federated search platforms have become necessities for any library with a growing collection of electronic subscriptions, while electronic resource management systems help libraries automate internal processes such as selection, licensing, and procurement. It also will help the library finalize their content easily without leave some others.

Commonly the main objectives of ILS are to build a system can be receive an input and also a service to the patrons. By using the ILS, there have many enhancements that the librarian can done for their library to make sure that their library have a new generation of interfaces. Ever-growing dissatisfaction with older model catalogs has mandated new library interfaces incorporating Web 2.0 features such as RSS feeds, user tagging, and reviews. Behind-the-scenes ILS operation matters less than the patron's experience. This new genre of ILS enables libraries to make drastic improvements to their online presence in also make their operation to be less in time uses and cost.

By the new interfaces attempt to provide a single point of access to all library content, including OPAC, Cataloguing, Tagging and others. But the patrons need to register with library before will have an authentication to access all the content provided. By existing of ILS also will make the libraries to break away from outdated interfaces and deliver library content and services on a par with other destinations on the web, like relevancy-ranked search results, faceted navigation, visual appeal through book jacket images, and good graphic design.

The ILS also have a Managing of e-content in the library,  Library investments in e-content continue to rise in tandem with patron expectations for immediate access to authoritative information. Link resolvers and federated search platforms have become necessities for any library with a growing collection of electronic subscriptions, while electronic resource management systems help libraries automate internal processes such as selection, licensing, and procurement. It also will help the library finalize their content easily without leave some others.

EnTRy 5 : Where are we going in library automation?

Today everybody in all field and profession talk about Information Technology (IT) which has demonstrated its impact for their use and it’s also the same thing happen in the library which IT has proven their impact in library environment such as library resource, systems, services and operation and also provided one of the best innovations in the history of libraries and it is changing the shape of libraries and role of librarians at an unprecedented pace. By using IT allows an integration of various library operations and activities, increases efficiency in acquisitions, access and retrieve the data, cataloguing, classification information retrieval and dissemination. It can reduce uninteresting and repetitive work helps to avoid duplications of efforts, increase the current issue and full text archive of this journal is available range of services, provides marketing opportunities, and facilitates cooperation and the formulation of networks and resources sharing in libraries. By using these technologies will enable users to have remote access and privileges to information and data from a variety of places, provide more up-to-date information and rapidly access to information also to bibliographic and full-text data and in the same time provide unlimited information from different sources and facilitate the reformatting and combining of data from different sources.

Even though this seems to be very fundamental it is essential to emphasize this aspect as the library automation is yet to take off in majority of the libraries. While justifying need for library automation more than cost-effectiveness the benefits derived by the library users become the major consideration. Since library does not happen to be an economic entity such benefits need to be looked at in a different perspective. To appreciate the advantages it becomes necessary to highlight the different levels of library automation.

The library catalogue or index to the collection forms the base for most of the library activities such as acquisition, reference, bibliographic service, inter-library loan etc. The users of library card catalogue will appreciate how fast the retrieval is, search and printing in automated environment. If the same system is available in network environment, users can have simultaneous access to the same database. From the library staff point of view the cumbersome job of printing the cards and their subsequent filing gets eliminated. Also, it conserves space and saves stationary.

The second level automation will be to use software which can handle all the library operations such as acquisition, circulation and serial control thus creating a network within the library or becoming part of the existing network of the institution. Networking of computers within an organization helps the users to browse the cataloguing system from any of the workstation/ terminal.

Another technology which has revolutionized the information world is the development of internet. Subscribers of internet, in addition to getting access to various public domain databases and services, will also get free e-mail and fax facility. Some publishers have started giving content pages of journals and libraries having subscription to such journals can also have full text of the articles. Many academic and research institutes have given free access to their working papers.

The revamp context of library technology provides new working style for librarians to apply familiar skills. Library automation is a relatively new in Malaysian and surely special libraries are seemingly ahead in the application. In order to capitalize on these new opportunities, librarians will need to be trained to take a broader view of traditional skills-reference and cataloging and understand new technologies. To achieve the national objectives to make sure that IT must be fully use in the working environment, a professional IT workforce must be nurtured to face the challenges of the Information Age. It also includes information skills that teach the technique to seek, retrieve, evaluate and use the variety of electronic information currently available.

The library and school environment is ideal for the teaching of those skills. Information-related activities should be centered on the library which can be further enhanced for information-based skills teaching and learning through the implementation of an automated library system. Although automating the libraries in the country might seem a problematic undertaking, the use of a cheap and relatively simple system can make it feasible. In this context, it is important that the education IT strategy must embody a long-term plan to automate the libraries which can contribute towards both the objectives of creating an information-rich Malaysian society and of national development. 

4TH ENTRY: Comment From Reading

Article Bibliography:

Tatomir, Jennifer and Joan C. Durrance. 2010. Overcoming the information gap:
         measuring the accessibility of library databases to adaptive technology users.
         Library Hi Tech 28(4): 577-594.

Article Title : 


Overcoming the information gap : Measuring accessibility of library database to adaptive technology users.


Article Details : 


Purpose – The purpose of this study is to address problems associated with the accessibility of academic library databases.

Design/methodology/approach – This study evaluates 32 databases and measures their accessibility to users of adaptive technology.

Findings – Based on the results of this study, 72 percent of the evaluated databases were rated as marginally accessible or inaccessible, reflecting a low level of compliance to federal web accessibility legislation and international web accessibility standards. To measure database accessibility to adaptive technology users, this study operationalized accessibility into ten component parts as the Tatomir Accessibility Checklist (TAC) and tested each database on each component.

Article Summary

This article is survey done by the author to check the problem with accessibility of academic library databases whether it used or not by the library. Library face the problem when it comes to accessing academic information database despite the requirements stated in federal web accessibility legislation and international web accessibility standards.

The author evaluates the accessibility to adaptive technology users of subscription library databases commonly purchased by libraries. They also operationalizes current federal web accessibility legislation and international web accessibility standards by developing a checklist of accessible features and tests the extent to which features have been incorporated into the major databases and importantly, the effect of a feature’s presence or absence. Because online and digital environments possess the greatest potential to provide individuals using adaptive technologies access to information, to futher the research they need to subscription library databases provides concrete and conclusive evidence regarding the current state of accessibility common digital resources purchased by libraries.

By using the TAC reveal to gathered a data, several key findings regarding the state of accessibility of academic resources

• Load time record for the database are long
• The data reveal a strong positive correlation between database load time and the number of TAC features absent from a database
• Above half of the databases studied, rated as marginally accessible or inaccessible. This number remains alarmingly low given the existence of federal web accessibility laws and international web accessibility standards
• Difficult to identified the features because of poor design

Recommendations

Two areas of future research were recommended by the researchers:

• The inadequacies of adaptive technologies and a lack of access to expensive adaptive technologies represent the main barrier preventing disabled individuals from gaining unhindered and equal access to digital resources
• The research into the positive and negative outcomes for disabled individuals generated by access or lack of access to adaptive technologies and digital resources likewise constitutes an area of investigation that will help to demonstrate the importance of technological and informational access

Comment

1. This paper is publish on 2009 but are not detail out the the exactly date. To make a survey, the date are important to make sure that it can be a reference for others people to do a same study or to continue a study that already done.
2. The author use just selected 32 online database from a thounsand subscription that they have done, it show the small amount from the survey done and also not state detail about the 32 online database that have been chosen.
3. But for me this research is very helpful for librarians when considering purchasing databases for libraries, especially when the academic institution want to use this research as their references because the statistic, explanation of the data, elaboration of the key finding are easily to understand. 

EnTRy 3 : TRS WINISIS

INTRODUCTION

The ISIS software family is a set of textual database software’s based on the same data formats to which a very strong retrieval engine for searching information and an even more powerful formatting language for displaying of information. The data format allows for textual information of the ‘semi-structured’ type to be stored in a highly economical but still very organized way. By these capabilities, ISIS software can accommodate for the international information formats MARC, CCF and other ISO-2709 based formats. These formats are most widely used in libraries, documentation and information centers.

WinISIS uses the same database structure as CDS/ISIS for DOS. Databases created by DOS versions of the CDS/ISIS system do not require any changes to be processed by the Windows version of this system. Moreover, if display and print formats as well as FST tables do not use new features of the formatting language of WinISIS, a database created by the Windows version of the CDS/ISIS system can be processed by its DOS version.

WINISIS is widely used in developing countries due to its low cost and flexibility. It is a low-cost program, and is useful for all sizes of resource centre, and those that need to produce resource lists and other outputs. However, it takes some time to learn the more complex features, such as the formatting language

From what I learned in class to create database using WinISIS, we can said that there have several features of WinISIS such as

·         many databases can be opened simultaneously, in particular the same database can be opened several time, if the same database was opened in various windows each of them can display another record or the same record shown according to another display format

·         Easy access to databases used recently, we can be forced to select a database from the database list

·         Global record processing operations (add a field, delete a field and replace text in a field contents) are available from the system utilities menu.

When to use WinISIS exactly, WinISIS is best suited in situations where:

·         there is a need for non-standard, sophisticated solutions

·         information of very different types (with different ‘field structures’) is to be integrated into one database allowing for multi-type information retrieval

·         Financial constraints are real on the one hand, but manpower is available on the other hand.

After done an exercise and assignment given, it seems that using WInISIS database deals with textual information:

·         Database structures can be defined for an unlimited number of databases

·         The data are stored in records, with fields and subfields as structural units

·         ‘Data extraction’ or definitions of what exactly to register, can be defined for indexing, displaying and conversion of data

·         records with fields, parts of fields or processed fields can be formatted for display, printing or sending through the Internet also this formatting can define character-mode, Rich Text Formatted or HTML-formatted outputs

·         An unlimited number of formatting definitions can be defined and applied to the data.

WinISIS cannot easily deal with:

·         numerical values, so applications where intensive calculations (as in accounting and stock management) are needed are not good candidates

·         very dynamic data where high numbers of information units are to be replaced all the time by new values (as in financial systems)

·         data where the presentation lay-out elements (fonts, page characteristics…) need to reside with the data themselves or are set for individual words (as in textprocessors and electronic publishing software)

·         huge text documents (like books), unless these are split into smaller subunits (as ‘records’)

Using WinISis we can process data using several processes such as data entry, update data, search record, print record, browse record, delete record and others. All these are the main function to make the data useable.

For the first step, we are introduced about the functionality have around the menu bar. All functionality need to understand to make sure that in the end we are not produced the wrong data required

For the data entry we have learned about how to enter data and if the data need to repeat we can make it repeatable

EnTRy 2 : Ms Acces

INTRODUCTION

A database is a store of information includes all the major objects related to the stored data. The data is stored in tables and categorized by fields. Each group of information is a record. A database can be searched or queried to find the data required. Because data is generally retrieved via a query, the data itself does not need to be entered in any particular order. It could replace manual systems such as files or card indexes.

Data are held in tables, with each row in a table being known as a record. Each record is divided up into columns known as fields, with each field containing certain data about that record. So, for example, a table of data for a club membership list would have one record per member of the club and each record would be split into fields such as surname, forenames, telephone number, address, town, postcode, membership fee and so on. A table maintained by a library might contain one record per book with each record split up into fields such as author, title, publisher, cost, shelf code and so on.

There have to type of database first is called a flat file database. It’s called flat file database because it is like a single sheet of paper with all the information on it for example like address book. The address book itself is a table. The categories in the address book are fields (name, address, phone number, etc.). Each entry in the address book is a record. An address book may have tabs for each letter of the alphabet so that you can find the person you are looking for quickly and easily

Microsoft Access is a relational database. This type of database has a much more complex design, which, in turn, offers much more functionality and power. The downside is that an effective relational database needs to be designed properly. A database system that can perform operations on a single table is known as a flat file system. However, data does not always fit happily into just one table. It is often much better to hold data in a number of different tables, which can be linked together by common fields. A database that can support this type of structure is known as a relational database system

During this course on week 3, we have learned about the using of Ms Access such as to create a new database, query, designing, forms, reports and others process.

a.     Table

An object that defines and uses to store data, each table contains information about a particular subject, such as customers or orders.  Table contains Fields (or columns) that store different kinds of data, such as a name or an address, and, Records (or rows) that collect all the information about a particular instance of the subject.

We can define a primary key (one or more fields that have a unique value for each record) and, one or more indexes on each table to help retrieve ours data more quickly.

b.     Query

Query in an object that provides a custom view of data from one or more tables. In Access, we can use the graphical query by example (QBE) facility or can write SQL statements to create queries. We can define queries to select, update, insert, or delete data and also define queries that create new tables from data in one or more existing tables.

c.     Form

An object designed primarily for data input or display or for control of application execution. We use forms to customize the presentation of data that application extracts for queries or tables. We can also print forms.

d.     Report

An object designed for formatting, calculating, printing, and summarizing selected data. We can view a report on your screen before we print it.

e.    Switchboard

A switchboard is a form that allows us to navigate around MS Access database. The switchboard is made of buttons that we can click and also can program these buttons to open forms, reports, queries and others. Microsoft Access also provides a switchboard wizard that allows defining the look and feel of switchboard.

Add caption

Designing a Database

Before use Microsoft Access to actually build the tables, forms, and other objects that will make up database, it is important to take time to design database. A good database design is the keystone to creating a database that does what we want it to do effectively, accurately, and efficiently.

Steps in Designing a Database

1. Determine the purpose of our database.

2. Determine the tables need in the database.

3. Determine the fields need in the tables.

4. Identify fields with unique values.

5. Determine the relationships between tables.

6. Refine design.

7. Add data and create other database objects.

After we do an exercise and assignment, what can I said that now I more understand about the MS Access. Also we know how the database function to store a various data for example in library which have a lot of book that must been captured in details