Dear cnwilks:
It would be difficult to answer your question without more information. For
example, are you dealing with an inventory of 500, 5000, or 50,000 books? Is
this a personal collection of books, a private corporate library, a special
library, or a public library? Will you need a circulation system? And so
on.. Are you thinking of creating a library system from scratch using
Access? If so, you may wish to do some research to ensure that you are not
reinventing the wheel. Even a quick Google search reveals many dozens of
vendors selling a wide variety of library management software. For example,
you might look at the following:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Refe...ence/Software/
Or, you can find shareware library systems as well, with, for example, a
search at
www.tucows.com. Creating a library system could be a very costly
solution, and you might find that a professionally written commercial
package would be much more cost effective.
I am a teacher-librarian for a small school, and I have created a library
system for my school in Microsoft Access. However, while there were good
reasons that I did this, I would never suggest that I think it was the most
cost effective or efficient solution. (BTW, a disclaimer: I am not a
professional programmer, and I have nothing to sell!). To answer your
specific questions: 1) I use a wedge-type barcode scanner and a free 3 of 9
barcode font. Scanners of the type I use cost between $200-$300, possibly
less. It has worked well for me, but I run a small library (20,000 titles),
for less than 300 patrons. 2) Obtaining cataloguing from various electronic
sources is a very common feature in library management software.
Your biggest problem won't be a lack of solutions to your library management
needs, but finding the best solution within the multitude of available
options!
HTH
Fred Boer
"cnwilks" <cn*****@gmail. com> wrote in message
news:f9******** *************** ***@posting.goo gle.com...
We're in the process of trying to manage an inventory of library books
using access, and were wondering about the following:
1. Bar code scanning hardware-cost/setup, etc.
2. Record input-any resources to populate records with UPC/ISBN codes
without having to key in all data manually.
Thanks in advance!
