eLibrary System
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1. Introduction and Background
Libraries are becoming increasingly automated in many Further Education Colleges installed in its Library management system for the past 10 years. Most previous system was UNIX based running over a network. Although it rarely failed when things did not go according to plan, it still had limited technical functions. What seemed new and innovative back then, although still robust and reliable, looked outdated by the start of a new Millennium. It was time for a major re-think!
I have one in mind! Something to contribute to the world: the eLibrary System. eLibrary System or eLS, is a library and research center automation system which provides 24x7 access to online collection of books, journals, magazine and newspaper articles in the humanities and social sciences. To compliment the library, eLS offer a range of search, note-taking, and writing tools. These tools help readers locate the most relevant information on their topics quickly, quote and cite.
eLS provides a comprehensive research environment to meet readers' academic needs. Regarding the selection and appraisal of a printed literature, the library and information community offers a set of effective methods and standards.
The extensive use of information technology improved the efficiency in delivering library services, enhance and speed up access to the library collections and optimize use of available staff resources. Through the Online Public Access, Internet facilities and multimedia terminals, information in electronic and multimedia formats has fast become an integral part of the library's resources. Remote access to library services including web renewal service, online reservation service and email enquiry service gives the public greater convenience and faster than Traditional Library System.
The Online Public Access enables searching the entire collections of Libraries. In addition to a wide range of search options, such as author, title, subject etc.
In contrast, there are no national or international standards yet for the selection and appraisal of Internet resources due to their evolving nature and complex characteristics. For libraries, when selecting Internet resources, they should not only take into account the serviceability and relevance of those resources to the library goals and missions, but also cost, technology, and compatibility to existent information resources.
2. System Overview
eLS has a rich and scholarly content selected by professional collection development librarians that is not available elsewhere on the Internet. Undergraduate, high school, graduate students, and Internet users of all ages have found eLS to be an invaluable online resource. Anyone doing research or just interested in topics that touch on the humanities and social sciences will find titles of interest in eLS.
Like what I've mentioned in the previous section, there are still no national or international standards yet for the selection and appraisal of Internet resources. However, eLS wants to advocate nine standards: information accuracy, the authority of information publisher, the breadth and depth of information, the reliability and efficiency of hyperlinks on main page, the quality of layout and design, whether the information is in time, who is in the audience of information, the originality of information, and, the operation capability of main page.
eLS is available by searching books, journal, magazine and newspaper articles in the collection. Users can read every title cover to cover. Users may choose at the start to narrow search only to books, audio-visual materials, some other categories or materials. From the systems, we recognize instantly whether the item status which is available on the shelf, on loan, or being reserved. For example, we wish to know library related activities that are being held or forthcoming; or wish to check own borrowing record, like how many books have been borrowed or overdue etc., simply follow the menu options via eLibrary system.
2.1 System Requirements
I have found four sites that are similar in nature to what is expected here.
Questia – The Online Library of Books and Journals <www.questia.com>. Questia offers the following: the world's largest online collection of complete books, journals and articles, searchable by word, phrase, title, author, or subject; Scholarly, high-quality books and journal articles from over 250 acclaimed publishers in the humanities and social sciences; Unlimited use of the books and articles in the collection no matter how many others are reading the same materials; Tools to write notes in the margins and highlight passages as if you were working with actual physical books; Easy-to-use tools to create footnotes and bibliographies; Hyperlinking of footnotes and bibliographies across titles for instant access to other related titles; State-of-the-art customer service; and, Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
CEEOL – Central and Eastern European Online Library <www.ceeol.com>. C.E.E.O.L. is an online archive which provides access to full text PDF articles from 255 humanities and social science journals, electronic books and re-digitized documents pertaining to Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European topics.
Literature.org – The Online Literature Library <www.literature.org>. On this site you will find the full and unabridged texts of classic works of English literature. Fiction from authors like Lewis Carroll, the Bronte sisters (Anne, Charlotte and Emily), Jack London, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and many others, and classic scientific works from Charles Darwin and Rene Descartes.
Free Online Library – Classic books by famous authors online <www.thefreelibrary.com>.
I will compare the site mentioned in pairs. Questia and CEEOL libraries were pretty much the same when it comes to the subject they offer. Both sites offers books, journal, magazine and newspaper articles in humanities and social sciences. Also, both sites requires their users to subscribe and pay for the materials that are to be seen. Not bad actually. It is a good business.
What differed between the two was the scope of area. CEEOL offers its materials from Central and Eastern Europe origin. Topics in humanities and social sciences are also concentrated in the same area. Unlike with Questia, CEEOL is more limited. To rate these two, Questia is more preferable.
On the other hand, Literature.org and Free Online Library are also the same in their materials offered. Both sites offers books that are written by famous classical authors and are rather concentrated on literary matters. The drawback is that both sites does not even require their users to cite their works at all. This is a huge issue in the academic world as it leads to Plagiarism. Statistics from established universities show that at least 30 percent of scholarly and academic papers are complete or partly copied from the Internet <www.m4-software.com>.
2.2 . System Scope According to the requirements collected
From what I observed from the sites that I have visited, the usual function visible and most useful is the Search function. There are many functions that I have come up for eLS. I will explain them as follows:
a. Member Features
Search System – perform searching for author, subject, keyword, title, or etc.
User Level Management – allows librarian to add, modify, and remove the user information. There are some user classes for the system: like Guest, Library Staff, Faculty, and so on.
b. Book Features
Category Management – allows librarian to add, modify, and remove category from library resource database.
Book Management – allows librarian to add, modify, and remove books from library resource database.
c. Book Borrow & Return Check in Features
Booking Management – allows user to reserve library resource items.
Borrow / Return Check In – allows librarian to check-in, check-out, and renew library resource items.
d. Report Features
Book Borrow / Return Analysis Report – view information about the real-time analysis report.
Book Borrow / Return History Report – view information about the history report.
Member Report – view information about the members.
e. Miscellaneous Features
Site Information – provide a simple site map and let people easy to access.
3. System Modelling
After discussing the functions that I'll be needing for the system. I could now design a prototype model. I have to site some factors first that needs to contribute to the system.
Since the system requires login for subscribers, these button should be prioritized in the first page. What should be initially visible is the log in area. However, let us not forget that we should advertise our own site. Therefore, to attract others that are visiting the site, a optional button for viewing free partial book views are to be provided. The Home page would be very minimal. Containing only the basic buttons for log in, log out, free book view and register. Though minimal, it is one of the most complex pages in the system. Upon entry, the system has to identify if the current user is either an administrator or not. Certain features as required are not available for subscriber use. Of course.
4. System Architecture
Major Applications
ASP.NET. is a set of web application development technologies marketed by Microsoft. Programmers can use it to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. It is part of Microsoft's .NET platform and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology.
Among the advantages of using ASP.NET are: (a) compiled code means applications run faster with more design-time errors trapped at the development stage. (b) Significantly improved run-time error handling, making use of exceptions and try-catch blocks. (c) User-defined controls allow commonly used templates, such as menus. (d) Similar metaphors to Windows applications such as controls and events, which make development of rich user interfaces, previously only found on the desktop, possible. (e) an extensive set of controls and class libraries allows the rapid building of applications. (f) ASP.NET leverages the multi-language capabilities of the .NET CLR, allowing web pages to be coded in VB.NET, C#, J#, etc. (g) ability to use the "code-behind" development model to separate business logic from presentation. (h) If an ASP.NET application leaks memory, the ASP.NET runtime unloads the AppDomain hosting the erring application and reloads the application in a new AppDomain. (i) Session state in ASP.NET can be saved in a SQL Server database or in a separate process running on the same machine as the web server or on a different machine. That way session values are not lost when the web server is reset or the ASP.NET worker process is recycled. (j) Previous versions of ASP.NET were criticized for their lack of standards compliance. The generated HTML and JavaScript sent to the client browser would not always validate against W3C/ECMA standards. In addition, the framework's browser detection feature sometimes incorrectly identified web browsers other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer as "downlevel" and returned HTML/JavaScript to these clients that was crippled or broken. However, in version 2.0, all controls generate valid HTML 4.0, XHTML 1.0 (the default) or XHTML 1.1 output, depending on the site configuration. Detection of standards-compliant web browsers is more robust and support for Cascading Style Sheets is more extensive. Lastly, (k) ASP.NET produces markup that passes W3C validation, but it is debatable as to whether this increases accessibility, one of the benefits of a semantic xhtml page + css representation. Several controls use html tables for layout by default. Microsoft have now gone some way to solve this problem by releasing Asp.NET 2.0 CSS Control Adapters, a free add-on that produces compliant accessible xhtml+css markup (source: Wikipedia.com).
SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) produced by Microsoft. Its primary query language is Transact-SQL, an implementation of the ANSI/ISO standard Structured Query Language (SQL) used by both Microsoft and Sybase. SQL Server is commonly used by businesses for small- to medium-sized databases, but the past five years have seen greater adoption of the product for larger enterprise databases (source: Wikipedia.com).
Like what has been said in Wikipedia.com, Andress (2003) agrees that the use of Microsoft's SQL Server database has grown dramatically over the past few years. She mentions that the improvements in the application have made it a viable option for many organizations, providing much of the same functionality as Oracle on mid-range applications and costing quite a bit less. Microsoft has also developed MSDE, a desktop edition of SQL server that is free to use. Many products use this as their database. MSDE is just a stripped-down version of SQL Server; it limits the number of allowed connections and the size of the database (2GB). Microsoft's SQL Server uses the SA account for administration, which has super user access to the server and no password by default. If you do not delete this account or give it a strong password, your data is available to anyone with a little SQL Server knowledge. SQL Server also supports its own authentication scheme or Windows login account. Many applications require the server to run in mixed mode-that is, allowing either authentication scheme to be used. For security purposes, you should ideally use only Windows authentication, enabling you to centrally manage all of your accounts. SQL Server contains a number of stored procedures. These are macros and programs that are installed by default. Some stored procedures allow users to execute code on the system. If your database is compromised, an attacker could use these stored procedures to gain full control of the system and as a launching point against other systems on your network.
Major Development Tools
Major Hardware
These project requires a power user computer system. I strongly recommend the following configurations: Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz or equivalent processor, at least 1.5 GB RAM, at least 80GB hard disk, 10/100 Mpbs Ethernet, 17" LCD display with EnergyStar rating monitor, 128MB video RAM, at least 4 USB 2.0 ports, a Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 operating system and a modem speed of 28.8 or higher; however, the speed may vary according to which the Internet connection. Also, performance results vary when using cable modems because of differences in duplex technology offered by cable providers. I would also like to recommend Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 as Internet browser.
5. Development and Production Environment
It is my job as creator of this system, of my user's experience to be simple and useful; where technology and process are transparent as possible. To do a job well, I must play the role of user advocate, ensuring that the interfaces designed are not just merely exercising the technology, but assisting the user do a job, easily moving from task to task, getting work done, making life easier.
Visual design is not merely a series of subjective choices based on favorite colors or trendy typefaces—at best a cosmetic afterthought considered if there is enough time and money. Good visual design is the tangible representation of product goals. I was mainly concerned with the "look, the method, and the style in which the information is presented. It is the result of a thoughtful, well-considered process, not merely a decorative afterthought.
Applying the appropriate visual/experience design principles and tools while incorporating the user perspective (information design) enhances the value, perception, and usefulness of the system. It is the best combination of project goals, the user perspective, and informed decision making.
Proper tools are to be used if efficient prototyping is the aim. 4th generation programming languages and complex integrated CASE tools are examples of Rapid Prototyping.
To achieve my goal, I will use ASP.Net. ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is a server side scripting technology that enables scripts (embedded in web pages) to be executed by an Internet server. It is a part of the .NET framework.
.NET Framework is the infrastructure for the Microsoft .NET platform. The .NET Framework is an environment for building, deploying, and running Web applications and Web Services. It contains a common language runtinme and common class libraries to provide advanced standard services that can be integrated into a variety of computer systems.
.NET Framework provides feature-rich application environment, simplified development and easy integration between a number of different development languages. The .NET Framework language is neutral. Currently supports C++, C#, Visual Basic.Net and Jscript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript) whereas, Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET is a common development environment for the .NET Framework.
ASP.NET contains a large set of HTML controls. Almost all HTML elements on a page can be defined as ASP .NET control objects that can be controlled by scripts. It can also contain a new set of object oriented input controls, like programmable list boxes and validation controls. A new grid control supports sorting, data paging, and everything you expect from a dataset control.
All ASP .NET objects on a Web page can expose events that can be processed by ASP .NET code. Load, Click and Change events handled by code makes coding much simpler and much better organized.
In the table below are the characteristics of ASP .NET.
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