Posted by Sandice58 on December 29, 2012 at 9:53pm
Hello. I'm a new to drupal and I have started working on my first project which is creating an online library management system. Where students and staff can be able to log in, search(by title, author)/add books, fines, view their history e.t.c. If you have ever created one or have any tips or modules to use, i'll gladly appreciate any help you provide
Comments
Hello Sandice, if your aim is
Hello Sandice,
if your aim is to have a system that will allow you to issue books to patrons, control circulation rules, fine people when they are late, etc. I would advise you to look into an open source Integrated Lybrary System, rather than doing it in Drupal (which is a content management system and will need a lot of tweaking to achieve these goals).
You can find out more about Koha, an open source ILS with an active community here :
http://koha-community.org/
Hope that helps.
Use a Library Management system
I agree with Gaetanb, this work has already been completed in other specialist systems, which have been created with indepth knowledge of common library workflows etc. It could be a mistake to underestimate the complexity of the task and end up struggling.
Creating a library catalog and management system with Drupal would be possible, but there seems little need, and especially as a new drupal user it would be an enormous task. Using Drupal to create a public face for your library however, bringing in information from the catalogue (such as new books etc) would be much more useful, as many other libraries have found - http://groups.drupal.org/libraries/libraries
If you have a real need to do this, look at the biblio module to store book and journal information and maybe the sopac module if you would like to connect to an ILS instead?
And opac module ;)
And opac module ;) (annoucement) which works very well with koha_connector module (jajm sandbox is waiting for testers and full project)
opac module looks great
I hadn't looked at library system integration for a while and had missed this.
Looks like a well planned module, and a relief to see a solution in D7 also.
I will almost certainly trial this in an upcoming project.