OpenBiblio Add-Ons
Self-Serve Checkout
Lookup
Stocktake
Introduction
OpenBiblio is a free open source automated
library system particularly well suited for school libraries. I helped select and install
the OpenBiblio package for the
Sts. Joan of Arc and Patrick School libraries and
continue to help support, maintain, and administer their systems. They have over 10,000
books in their OpenBiblio collection.
As of the time of this writing (4/19/2008) the current OpenBiblio version is 0.6.0.
Self-Serve Checkout for OpenBiblio 0.6.0
Our students checkout their own books. The self-serve checkout patch is a
collection of small changes that simplify checkout for the students. The idea is
that students can checkout books completely without touching the keyboard or mouse.
There are three basic changes:
- The Member Information and Checkout Stats at the top of the checkout screen are
reduced to take up less space so the student does not have to scroll.
- The Member information is limited to Name, Card Number, Grade, and Teacher.
- The Name is in large bold red letters so the
student can easily identify themself as the currently selected student.
- Only Material types with non-zero Counts are listed in the Checkout Stats.
The others are omitted.
- This is the main change. The Barcode Number on the checkout screen can accept either
a material barcode or a member barcode. When a barcode is scanned:
- The bibliography collection is searched. If it is found then the item is checked out.
This is how openbiblio works normally.
- However, if that fails it then searches for the same barcode as a member number.
If it is found as a member number then that member is selected and it returns to the
checkout screen for that member.
- If it is also not found as member number then it returns to the checkout screen for
the same user and indicates 'No bibliography was found with that barcode number'.
- The barcode textbox contents are always cleared so that on a mis-scanned barcode the
textbox does not have to be cleared before a re-scan.
This way you never have to leave the checkout screen during the checkout process.
- We don't Hold books so this feature is removed from the checkout screen.
The checkout computer is normally on the checkout screen and has a stand mounted
non-contact barcode scanner attached. The barcode scanner appends an Enter and
beeps when a barcode is scanned. To checkout books, the student just scans their
library card - the scanner beeps and the checout screen updates to indicate
they are the selected student which is easily verified with the
large red letters. They then scan their first book - the checkout screen
updates with the just-scanned book at the top of the list which is again easily
verified. They scan their second book, and so on. When done, the next student scans
their card, verifies, and then proceeds with their books.
To install the Self-Serve Ceckout patch, download the zip file
selfserve041908.zip and follow these
installation instructions.
Lookup for OpenBiblio 0.6.0
A popular add-on for OpenBiblio is Fred LaPlante's Lookup feature. You can download it
from Fred's website here
but I find these sort of things to be more conveniently installed as patches so after
installing according to Fred's instructions I created an alternative installation
procedure.
To install Lookup as a patch, download the zip file
lookup_2007-07-10.zip and follow these
installation instructions.
Lookup requires YAZ which can be found here
including packages for Debian Linux.
Stocktake for OpenBiblio 0.6.0
Stocktake is an inventory add-on that was available for 0.5.x and I updated for 0.6.0.
To install Stocktake, download the zip file
stocktake-0.6.0-070906.zip and follow these
installation instructions.
Emal me Matt Boytim
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