[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Corporate Software Library

[Don McMorris]

Hi eselliott:

On 5/25/07, Eric.Elliott at l-3com.com <Eric.Elliott at l-3com.com> wrote:
>
>
> In my search for information on implementing a corporate software library,
> OpenSource ILS came up.  I love the idea!  From the research that I have
> done to this point, it seems to me that if indeed this is the solution to
> managing the materials, Evergreen and Koha are the two best options.  To
> this list I post a couple of questions:
> ~ Anyone near (couple of hours removed) from the Dallas / Fort Worth Texas
> area that has Evergreen installed?
To my knowledge, there isn't anybody in that geographic area with a
production installation of Evergreen.  However, there are a couple
different VMWare images available at www.open-ils.org/cvs if one of
your goals is to experiment with an existing installation.  We would
be more than happy to answer any questions for you on the lists or in
the chat (in IRC, on the Freenode IRC network in #OpenILS-Evergreen).

> ~ Anyone here have suggestions on implementing a software library?
I'm unsure what you mean when you say "software library", whether it
deals with physical media, software available on a LAN/WAN, license
tracking, or a little bit of everything.  Evergreen should be able to
support it all, though.

Evergreen, like many ILS's, uses information in MARC21 format.  MARC21
stands for "MAchine Readable Cataloging for the 21st century".  It is
a very concise format to store records, but the good news is a small
private library can get away with using only a small amount of fields
to still create "legal" MARC records (the "correct" method uses
hundreds of fields and sub-fields with terminology defined by manuals
thicker than the Manhattan phone book!).  The Library of Congress
maintains oversees the MARC21 standard, and maintains a web site about
MARC at http://www.loc.gov/marc/.

Every version of every title usually gets a MARC record known as a
"Bibliographic Record".  Examples for your case might be "RedHat
Enterprise Linux 3", "RedHat Enterprise Linux 2", "Microsoft Office
2003", etc... The "Bib" usually contains the title, publisher, media
format, and anything you can think of! You can enter as much
information as you want.  An example for a software library might be
the name of the software, whom it's published by, where to acquire it,
and how many licenses you have.  Additionally, bibs have fields that
support URIs... For example, if your media is on a network, you can
link to it.

A second part of cataloging has to do with the individual items.  Once
you create the Bibliographic record telling about the product... The
Item record tells about a specific copy (where it's located, what it's
price was, etc.).  If you have physical media, you can use item
records for this purpose.  You could also use item records to keep
track of where your licenses are assigned, if you so desired.  It's
quite flexible.

There is a third part to cataloging called "Authority records".  These
records are intended to standardize information in the bibliographic
records (for example, "Microsoft Corp" may have an authority record so
that every program by Microsoft has the standardized
format/spelling/etc. of the name).

>
> Thanks!
>
> eselliott
>
>
> ~~~~~
> Eric Shayne Elliott
> L-3 Communications, Link Simulation & Training
> http://www.link.com
> Information Systems
> 817.619.3755 Phone
> 817.619.3829 Fax
>
> "Every rose is an autograph from the hand of God."
>           --  Unknown
>


I've hope I've answered some questions you may have.  If you have any
more, please do not hesitate to contact us again!

Sincerely Yours,
--Don