On Tuesday, 1 ??November 2005 20:09, Tzahi Fadida wrote: > I was wondering if there is a library (books) software out there that > is free and preferably in Hebrew.
Library software is only a small part of automating a library. The biggest part is creating the catalog. If all you want is to be able to search the catalog any sql database will do that supports hebrew data. Obviously you will need some sort of front end, and that would have to be in Hebrew. I hate to say this on a Linux list, but an Access front end might be the easiest. As you well know Hebrew support and Linux in general is not easy for newcomers without a technical orientation, and requiring a school full of students to learn Linux and the school to have several Linux systems may be too much of a battle to fight, just to get the card catalog on-line. Getting card catalog information is not that difficult in English, getting it in Hebrew may be almost impossible. All books published in a long time have a book id number called an ISBN, which you can use to search many on-line catalogs. If you can't find one already in existance, a simple perl script using curl or the native perl functions which would go out to an on-line database, extract the fields you want and create a file which could be loaded into a table would do what you need. The U.S. Library of Congress and the U.K. equivalent, have on-line searchable databases. I don't know if Hebrew U. or any other library has such a database in Hebrew. You would have to check. Then becomes the hard part. ISBNs were not designed by a data processing expert and don't have check digits. So each book in the collection will have to have it's ISBN entered and double checked to make sure you have the correct book. This is a very tedious manual process. Don't even think about having people type in all the data for a book, such as subject, author, title, etc. Unless you have a very small collection, it simply won't happen. People like to do these things, and you will be able to get volunteers, but something like this becomes old very quickly. While I understand that this is a free software list, and you are looking for an open source library program, you need to understand that the cost of the computers and software is a very small part of the cost of automating a Library. If you are adding Linux systems to a place that has none, the cost goes up significantly, and must be considered. However, the real "show stopper" is getting the collection cataloged, and maintaining it. It's also important to note that the time spent on the computer is in addition to the time normally spent by the librarian. Many private libraries don't expand their collection constantly, they burn out their new book budget in the first few weeks of the year, but there still is some maintaince as books are dropped due to damage or being superceeded all the time. If the software includes patron records and check ins and outs, there is a lot more traffic on the system, backups need to be done daily and managed, etc. This all takes the librarian's time and therefore costs money. Is the school willing to pay for it? Even if the librarian takes on the responsability of automating, every minute they spend on the computer is one minute less they spend doing other things such as helping students, checking in and out books, maintaining the collection, teaching classes, etc. Many schools can not afford to give these things up. It would be a shame to invest your time and effort in installing a system for them that won't be used. Or even worse, one that is used but is not kept up to date or backed up. I'm not saying that you should not do this, but you really need to understand the depth of the project and the commitment needed from everyone to make it fly. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 You should have boycotted Google while you could, now Google supported BPL is in action. Time is running out on worldwide radio communication. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
