My goal this summer is to get our library (at least the nonfiction) cataloged in some way that we can give our congregation access to it via the church website. We don't necessarily want it interactive at this point (a static record would be fine), just something that they can look up titles, subjects, or authors on, and that we can do the same from our library laptop. We'd also like to be able to add our own patron reviews.
Eventually we'd like to automate our circulation as well, but that can wait for the time being. It could even be two different systems, since our collection is small and we are very limited in adding more (physical) books, DVDs, etc. due to space issues.
Is it possible to do this (catalog collection & get online) with password protection from the website (i.e. they'd need to be registered with us to view the catalog) for under $500 or that plus automated circ for under $1000? Does anyone have practical experience with such a program?
Thanks!
Replies
Thank you so much for your input so far. I hope others will continue to add their exeriences as well. As I mentioned to Barb, we strongly considered Library Thing but our collection will eventually exceed their maximum, and there were other considerations for us as well. We also approached our church board with ResourceMate, but the tech people evaluated it and said no; I also know of another church that uses it successfully in the library, but has not be able to get it to work through the Internet due, I think, to compatability issues. Cross system did not do what we wanted. I found a program called Library Express (from the UK) which we might go with, but it has a very awkward to use circ system for the number of users we have (we have about 300+ patrons currently registered, since we register by the whole household), and eventually we do want to automate our circulation. Since our library is only open on Sundays, it would be hard to justify spending more than $100 a year on automation subscription fees to maintain the system, after spending up to our budget of $1000 for an automation system, so that eliminates some of the "big" names. If we were open several days a week and/or were also used by a church school, that would be reasonable, but that's not in the forseeable future. I am interested in learning more about Open Source systems. Can anyone explain that to us?
Open Source systems are freely licensed (software license), but never actually "free". I've been an open source developer and advocate for years and currently manage a handful of open source projects for work and for my personal web projects.
While many churches run an open source content management system (CMS) or blog, such as Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal, they rarely have the intense server and coding resources it takes to maintain an open source library catalog/ILS.
I have build and supported enough open source projects to know that a self-hosted (in-house servers & managed) open source ILS/OPAC is something I definitely will NOT recommend to my church library. Because I'm the one who'd most likely have to support it, and I just don't have that much volunteer time or energy (I do it all day at work).
Koha is the biggest most robust and professional open source ILS/OPAC. Evergreen is another that's been around longer. I *am* looking into hosted packages using Koha (hosted/supported by a vendor), but not an in-houe supported version of the free open source software (for the above reasons).
Many people get excited about open source being "free", but they don't realize how much work and time (and often money, in terms of expertise and support) it takes to maintain an open source project for the long haul. Free is never free.
Barbara Allen
Check it out at http://www.fbcalibrary.org/cgi-bin/libsearch.cgi?=1&=*&=3&login=accept.
ResourceMate Plus and the web search add-on are under $500.
We have a very small library and no budget so I use LibraryThing.com, it is a social networking site for booklovers and many small organizations and personal libraries use it for Cataloging. It is free up to a certain number of books and then I believe it was a small fee for up to 2000 books. I heard about it through the National Church Library Association web site. I have a link to our church site at LibraryThing from our church website. All that is needed is to type in the ISBN and you are in business. The folks can browse on the internet without having to search through all the titles on the shelves. We still use oldfashioned check out, write the title in the notebook and the date. I have no feedback yet on whether it is being used. I have a library newsletter going out later this month with the details.
Barb Keil
Barbara Allen
Barbara Keli: Thank you for Serving our country.