So a coworker of mine wants to develop an ILS for the library.  I’ve been trying to poo-poo the idea and suggest going with an already developed open source system, however it isn’t panning out the way I want to.  So I started thinking, let him build an ILS.  Let him build the most awesome ILS ever.  In fact here’s a list of things I want it to do:

1. Patron records should be automatically imported from the registrar’s software
1. Including photo & email addresses
2. Overdue notices should be generated send via email on a bi-weekly basis
1. I don’t want to do anything for this to happen…fully automatic
2. Yes I want it emailed.  Save a tree.
3. Catalog
1. We mainly copy catalog so it should play nice with OCLC
2. Only display the basic information
1. Title
2. Author
3. Call Number
3. Have option to display more information
1. Year
2. Publisher
3. ISBN
4. Number of pages
4. Searching : This must be awesome
1. Limit by media type
2. Single search box with Amazon like results
1. subjects (in common English)
2. title (it shouldn’t matter if there are articles or not in the search)
3. author (no matter the order)
4. part of the work (short story in a book or song on album)
3. Automatic spell checker (did you mean…)
4. Browse shelf feature
5. Inclusion of all available materials
1. Media stuff
2. Reference
3. E-Journals
4. Journals
5. Archives/Special Collections
4. Services
1. Requesting/Renewing books online
2. Reserve module for shorter check out times, etc.

Can you think of anything else it should do?  I would say acquisitions stuff, but the truth is we don’t acquire all that much.  Perhaps some sort of donor database with an acquisition bit–to follow the order/track the paper work.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Library. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.