Automating Secondary School Libraries: A Web-Based Library Management System

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a web-based school library management system for secondary schools in Malaysia (WBSSLMS), which aims to provide an effective and efficient way of acquiring, cataloguing, searching, retrieving, downloading and maintaining of library materials. The systems operates in a consortium where secondary school libraries can participate as members to share information resources and still maintain separate library databases. Information gathered from various literature, onsite visits to school libraries, brainstorming sessions with teacher-librarians and observation on the present systems used, have helped produce ideas in designing and implementing the systems. WBSSLMS consists of seven main modules and each is basically targeted to three types of users; i.e. students, teacher-librarians and systems administrators. Any computer, regardless of its operating system, could access any of the modules as long it had Internet access and a browser. The modules are Registration, Acquisition, Cataloguing, Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), Circulation, Maintenance and Information Management.. This paper also presents the strengths and limitations of the systems, and also the possible future enhancements. User acceptance tests showed that a high majority of respondents found the systems easy to use. They also found that the modules are complete and have an appealing interface. It is foreseen that WBSSLMS has met the requirements to meet the needs of a library automated systems, as well as a management information systems.