simmotech

Well, I pity the kids in the school you describe. My wife is a professional librarian who covers 5 schools in our area - half days in some, full days in others. None of them are large and a couple are in relatively deprived areas. She maintains the libraries and classes come in one at a time to borrow books. The kids absolutely love it, and the teachers and heads love it too. It has proved so successful, she is now looking to recruit additional resource because other schools have heard about it word of mouth and want to do the same. She weeds the books, buys new stock (when there is budget) and promotes a love of books and learning to the kids. She is the reason I wrote the software - she was so sick of the schools spending a large amount each year on crappy software that was slow, crashed virtually every day and getting no support. It was written for her type of scenario (per class visits though the class teacher can act as librarian); it has a per-class view so you can see all the kids in one go. She now has fast and reliable software so can spend more time helping the kids with their books.

If you don't have library software (or a written logging system) then you don't really have a library - just 'some books'. I take you point that most primary schools won't have a full-time librarian but enlightened ones may well have a part-time librarian. And failing that it will be down to the teacher or TA to be responsible for the books that their class pupils borrow. Borrowing and returning books is quite easy - just a couple of barcode scans typically. This just makes it easier to have the up-to-date pupil details in place ready for those barcode scans. Doing it manually would take a long time and be prone to errors.

I have now actually got hold some actual data that MLS sends out when you cancel your subscription - it is a zip file containing just 4 csv files. Whilst they seem to have changed from quoting every field regardless of whether it needs it or not, they are still not escaping embedding quotes properly! Useless. I have emailed them asking them about this and attaching a copy of the email I sent to them a year ago with the few lines of codes to correctly write values. I also asked them whether there would normally be additional files included in the zip file for Reservations/Reviews - my customer didn't happen to use them so it is unclear whether they just didn't include them for that reason or whether they don't include them at all.

So who is interested in trying out SmartLibrarian to see what I have to offer? You will need a PC with SQL Server Express installed. Any version will do (2016 and higher requires 64-bit) and I can provide instructions on how to download and install it. The application itself is a Click-Once application (and has a signed certificate). Takes only a few minutes to install. There is a built-in Test database with 17K+ resources and I have included an option to turn on a Barcode scan emulation menu (since you won't have the real resources to scan). Or, if you prefer, I can export and import your actual data from Junior Librarian (including photos!) for fuller testing including using your own Barcode scanner. Currently, the application is specifically designed for a single Librarian to Issue and Return/Renew books. Special support is included for processing a class at a time which is the situation most prevalent in Primary Schools. There is a lot of support to tidy and rectify the data you import from Junior Librarian. What I am looking for is for people to try it out and confirm:- - it is quick - it is reliable - that the Admin tools do everything they need to - provide guidance on how future versions should incorporate per-pupil logons that reflects how their school works. - provide guidance on reporting etc. Support is available at Login Required | SmartLibrarian and documentation will be built up on there starting this week. As a Click-once application, I can release updates very quickly and the application will automatically check for them on startup.

I don't have any - I'm a software developer But I would imagine that small junior schools would have a single machine but larger junior schools plus secondary schools would have more. Why not publish additional licence costs online with the rest of the prices? I've downloaded the manual for later perusal but I had a quick glance and got the impression that:- - the software was originally a generic asset tracking app that has been extended for libraries (text like 'Units in Stock' and 'Reorder Level') - it is designed for only a librarian/administrator to use and no functionality to allow students to do self-checkout or login to review their loans and write reviews etc. Am I wrong?

Just be aware that the £157pa price is per computer. +1 for Stored locally

It would appear that MLS, via their Capita parent, are willing to take legal action unless the full notice to terminate is given to them in writing despite their software only working half of the time - verbally is no good it would seem. Bunch of b*stards IMHO. I can't believe they would send a letter like that to a primary school and tie them in for another year. I've been trying to help them get their shitty software just doing the basics like exporting correctly in CSV but they refuse to even acknowledge anything is wrong... "The hosted version of the library system have been around for nearly 10 years. Of which time you are the first person to comment on the csv file export with double quotes causing issues." Unbelievable arrogant! So I sent them some C# code which produces correct files (a dozen lines or so) but I won't hold my breath on them fixing it soon. But the gloves are off now.

Thanks for that info LeMarchand - on what basis did you get them to finally accept the cancellation? (or had you given notice in writing within the time)

Said Primary school just received an invoice for MLS for another year for nearly £600 Apparently, there is a 90 day notice period required to not renew for another year! They were told verbally that the school was definitely not going to renew and we believe this was followed up in writing (need to check). MLS also spoke to my wife last week at another of her schools where they were trying to harass the head into going with their online version using crap such as "Microsoft no longer support it and it will stop working." I've tried not to have a go at MLS (after comments in this thread) and even offered to help them with the bugs I reported to them but now they are taking my customer, well I can't let that go. Any advice/experience about unfair contract terms etc. would very welcome.

That could still be done using a Tag or membership of a Group, rather than a specific checkbox I guess but either way, another question arises... Would a child be upset or offended if another child saw they were flagged as 'Pupil Premium' as I understand that it means the child is considered "disadvantaged whether by income or by family upheaval" and/or "adopted; or in care"?

I guess they do but I can't get at them to see what's already there (and what size/resolution/format etc.). I don't have access to a SIMS setup and its not likely to be included in an export anyway IMHO. Junior Librarian - well being a web app I can just copy an existing image off the web page but that would be fixed at 183 high x 141 wide. They do have a webcam button and it does take over my webcam but it doesn't show an image unfortunately. It does however have a nice 'target area' for a dialogue box which I'll try to get my control to emulate at some point.

Free School Meals - not relevant so not included. Pupil Premium - although my wife points out schools with Pupil Premium pupils enables them to pay for her very reasonably priced services, I can't see how it is relevant in running a library so not included. Special Educational Needs - JL just has a checkbox for this but it sounds like a whole range could be included. Language - Not sure what it means - Surely English is what is being taught, so does it mean the main language of their families? Ethnicity - There could be a shitstorm here if my dropdown doesn't cover a particular ethnicity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_defined_ethnicity - would rather not go there!** All 'Persons' in my database can have Tags associated with them. Some of these Tags are built-in but others can be added. I think it would be better if I left Special Education Needs/Language/Ethnicity out for now and let librarians add custom Tags to more clearly define what they want to identify. ** Already had a telling off from my 14yr daughter because the boy/girl default Avatars I had were too light-skinned' - she told me they should be Yellow by default like Emojis in iPhones. And she was right! UTS #51: Unicode Emoji so I fixed that up. My cheapo test webcam works well but the controls I have are extracting a single-frame from the live video sequence and I haven't worked out how or even if it is possible to get a proper snapshot at photo resolution that would work on all webcams. Also, being a video recording, the images are landscape where we would need a portrait image. I may have to split this into two parts - one to get an image and then one to crop a certain size out of it. Luckily, my first customer didn't use photographs so I can spend a bit more time on this later.

Free School Meals, Pupil Premium, Special Educational Needs; Language; Ethnicity Is there any reason a school library would make use of the above fields?

Well, it seems I have my first customer! A Primary school is refusing to renew their upcoming MLS Junior Librarian subscription because their cloud-hosted system is down more than it is up and very, very slow at the best of times and too expensive. So my development is now focused on providing solely what they need for that initial release mid-April:- - I have already (mostly*) extracted their data from the cloud in XML and have an Importer to read it all in. - I just ordered a cheap and cheerful webcam from Amazon so that that initial release will support images of the kids. (* can't export photos from JL easily that I can see). - For now, circulation will be hosted by class - ie a single screen showing everyone in a given class and allowing the Librarian to return their books and let them choose new ones. This simple requirement means I should be able to get what they need working by mid-April and I can write more the more complicated stuff later.

I had to look this up and there are dozens of definitions of GMD - to which were you referring?

That is the easiest way but not necessarily the best way for future usage. What I ideally want is to find out those 'extra values' and include them into the system (ie they are 'well-known', have their own ID and can be programmed against). That's not to say they are useful to everyone all the time - I can provide an option that allows which 'well-known' values are allowed in that specific library.

Update: Not a single person interested in having a play! Oh well, plod on... As it happens whilst only half-way through development, I now have a customer! It is a Primary School that is going to give Junior Librarian the heave-ho and so I now need a minimal working version by mid-April which is when their notice period to MLS will be up. So the first release will be necessarily biased towards supporting Primary School scenarios I have access to a couple of hosted Junior Library databases and have worked out how to extract data to recreate the library in my software. Unfortunately MLS have problems with CSV exports (corrupt), MARC21 (invalid) and XML exports (can crash if >~36K records). But my first school has a relatively small library so I have a full set of data to play with. Also, I am talking to MLS Support about those and other issues I can easily recreate so they can get them fixed (even after all I've said about them, I still feel a bit guilty about writing rival software to pinch their customers) My question for you today is about Media Types. Because it is a simple text field in MLS, everyone and their dogs type in seemingly endless variations and then wonder why they get 'incomplete' results when they search. e.g. These are just the new ones just from my Primary School that I will have to map to my existing Media Types: big bookbook (details unknown)book (details unknown);audio cassettemultiple copy packnovelty bookohp transparenciesppaperback (a format)paperback (c format)paperback / softbackpaperback;audiobook on cassettepaperback;audiobook on cdpaperback;cd-rompicture bookpicture booksspiral / comb boundspiral bound My software will have dropdown selections and I have some defined at the moment (ones with * may be questionable) Book Hardcover * Hardcover with dust jacket * Paperback Book and tape set * Novelty Book Board Book Leather/fine binding * Mixed Media * Map Picture Book * Audio Cassette CD-ROM DVD Blu-Ray E-Book Software For each Resource Type, the dropdown will show a certain subset of the above. My problem is that I am not a librarian so I don't know how far to go in supporting Media Types. Does anyone really need to catalogue to the extent they know whether a book is "big" or is "spiral bound". Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Yup, but no-one at the time knew how to enter them. My preference is for tab-delimited files with '.tab' file extension. That way sodding Excel doesn't try to take it over and a text editor shows things in nice columns. But CSV has been formalized since 2005 at https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180 so you'd think they would have got around to writing a working version by now.

All library software is cheaper than MLS, that's why we are all here! Actually just got a surprise from MLS - I called them up to ask about who owns the data stored on their side expecting to hear about a fee charge to export it and indeed that's what I was initially told. But when I asked how much that would actually be, someone went to check and gave me this updated information:- - Export of data is now FOC! - Stored data is deleted 30 days after renewal date. - 90 days notice is needed to not renew. They also pointed that data can be exported within the application. However, that is per-table, report-to-csv exporting which I have found to be (1) very annoying to manually setup; (2) of dubious reliability. e.g. Some tables refused to fully export and had to exported in several 'bits'; (3) poorly executed. Quotes used regardless of whether used of not (not following CSV spec) and failed to 'escape' real quotes or commas in Fields which effective corrupts the CSV file.

Libresoft: "A low annual charge for access to our excellent software & support." - well...what is that low annual charge

Have you guys seen this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/176611-library-systems-what-others-there-5.html Especially the screenshots and notes in the latest posts. I need more help speccing the system so that it will cover everything you and your librarians need.

Does your Access database consist of 3 files - Library.mdb, Locks.mdb & Security.mdb? If so, I have a password cracker that works in less than a second.

I have now come up with a good way of anonymizing the personal data within my test database so it is now possible to let anyone interested to try out and help further spec the application. I shortly plan to publish an Alpha version of the software on my website so you guys can have a play with it. This will be a One-Click .NET publication so you will get the latest published update. (If you are paranoid that I am trying to infect your computer, just run it in a virtual machine sandbox). The app can be uninstalled at any time using the normal Uninstall in Windows. Important! There is absolutely no obligation on your part to buy the final release should you try out the Alpha version! This is purely a way of allowing me to get input on required specifications which will help the application sell itself later. (and also bug-finding of course!) You will need a version of MS SQL Express on your testing machine and preferably the SQL Tools as well. The App will look for a database on the current machine and not finding one, will show the following screen:- You can either create a completely new database using the top arrow-button; or copy the same sample test database (10,000+ items) I am using using the bottom-arrow button. I suggest you use the latter - it will Restore the database in less than a second and give you a good number of objects to play with. (Please note however, that I consider the test database poor quality overall as it was imported from a Junior Library database and is full of mispellings, duplications, and poor choices of reference data etc. It is useful to me however as it will allow me to develop maintenance tools to 'cleanup' imported databases - see the "Series Name" maintenance where Merge button allows multiple items to be merged into one) Using SQL Management tools, you can delete the database you created at any time and you will see the above screen the next time you run the app. Please feel to PM me if you need more information.

Latest update:- Bibliograph Lookup The biblio lookup form has been updated:- - The form is now split into Left and Right. Left shows the values that you want to use and Right is a scrolling list of biblio sources - Note the arrows on each item on the right. They allow you to choose which bits of text you want to use and the values are copied to the left. - or you can click on the arrow on the first row and copy all available values from that Source. - or you can use the Get Best Values button to select the best available value from all Sources. - All values shown are simple strings but that is not what we want in our library so we need to match those strings against existing items (or create new ones) - The coloured dots on the Left values show whether there is a direct match in the system (green) or whether there is a similar match (yellow) for you to choose. - When you click save, you will be shown a further form to showing for each of those imported string values a dropdown of equal or similar values in the library for you to choose. - In this case, the classification of 823.914 doesn't exist so 823 is nearest. However, the dropdown also has a Create... option so, if you wish, you can create 823.914 on the fly and use it immediately. - Creating Authors, Series names, Publishers will also have a Create... option I can't think of anything more to do on this. It works very well. Word Cloud I have created a simple word cloud as a proof of concept - takes list of strings and their usage count and draw a cloud:- - This will be available to show clouds of Keywords, Searches (whole library or per class), or anything we can think of. Classification Keywords - All Classifications can have Keywords associated with them. This will help Searching where individual resources have not been keyworded yet. Item Links This is not complete yet, but I have made a good start. The idea is that a 'thing' in the database can show how it is linked to other 'things' in the database, allowing you to jump between them. Each 'thing' has its own summary form. For example, here is a summary form for a book resource:- Clicking the link button at the bottom left, shows this:- This makes it very easy to find similar resources. for example, clicking on the "Horrible Science" Series and its link button will then show this:- Then clicking on those links (one or multiple) will then show that book's summary and so on. When you find what you are looking for, click on its Open button. The same concept applies to People, Organizations, Classifications, Keywords etc.

Here is a screenshot of the biblio lookup form... The plan is that the left column will hold the current values for the resource. Double-clicking on a cell over to the right (or maybe each cell will get a button*) will copy its value over to the left column. Save will then apply those left-column values into the Resource. There will be a bit of extra work setting the Author or Publisher for example, since these values are only strings. So we need to be able to select an existing "Bloomsbury Publishing Plc" rather than creating a new entry. Here is a screenshot of the Alertcheck screen.... (I have some big plans for the Title check. I researched some code (OpenNLP) that should help infer context and be more authoritative about which words should be capitalised) Here is a screenshot of the Grid and popup Filter Panel.... The left two columns are fixed so the horizontal scrollbar will show more columns but leave the Title always displayed. I plan to add column sets to the Filter Panel (or maybe another popup panel*) so that you can show/hide the Borrower/Due Date/OD Days at once. Tomorrow, I'll swap the Borrowers names randomly so I can upload screenshots without having to blur the names. * These are the kind of thoughts I have that I need direction on! Otherwise I end up coding stuff that noone wants. Cheers Simon