AITAM LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
AITAM Public Library is the biggest library in Koforidua. Currently, it has about 300 members. A person who is 18 or above can become a member. There is a membership fee of GHC400 for a year. There is a form to be filled in which person fills personal details. These forms are kept in store for maintaining members’ records and knowing the membership period.
A member can issue a maximum of three books. He/she has three cards to issue books. Against each card a member can issue one book from library. Whenever a member wishes to issue a book and there are spare cards, then the book is issued. Otherwise that request is not entertained. Each book is to be returned on the specified due date. If a member fails to return a book on the specified date, a fine of GHC 2 per day after the due return date is charged. In case a card gets lost, then a duplicate card is issued. Accounts are maintained for the membership fees and money collected from the fines.
There are two librarians for books return and issue transactions. Approximately 100 members come to library daily to issue and return books. There are 5000 books available out of which 1000 books are for reference and cannot be issued. Records for the books in the library are maintained. These records contain details about the publisher, author, subject, language, etc.
There are suppliers that supply books to the library. Library maintains records of these suppliers. Many reports are also produced. These reports are for details of the books available in the library, financial details, members’ details, and supplier’s details.
Currently all functions of the library are done manually. Even the records are maintained on papers. Now day by day members are increasing. Maintaining manual records is becoming difficult task. For issue of books, each member has four library cards. Against each library card, a book is issued to the member. When the member returns that book the card is given back to the member.
However, this approach is very cumbersome. Sometimes the card is misplaced by library staff or by the member. Then a new card has to be issued. Number of members and the books are also increasing. It is becoming difficult to maintain all the records manually.
There are other problems also that the library staff is facing. These include cases of issuing duplicate cards to a member when member or library staff loses the card. It is very difficult to check how genuine the problem is. Sometimes the library staff needs to know about the status of a book as to whether it is issued or not. So to perform this kind of search is very difficult in a manual system. Also management requires reports for books issued, books in the library, members, and accounts. Manually producing the reports is a cumbersome job when there are hundreds and thousands of records.
Management plans to expand the library, in terms of books, number of members and finally the revenue generated. It is observed that every month there are at least 50-100 requests for membership. For the last two months the library has not entertained requests for the new membership as it was difficult to manage the existing members manually. With the expansion plans, the management of the library aims to increase its members at the rate of 75 per month. It also plans to increase the membership fees from GHc400 to GHC750 for yearly and GHC350 for half year, in order to provide its members better services, which includes increase in number of books from 3 to 4.
Due to the problems faced by the library staff and its expansion plans, the management is planning to have a system that would first eradicate the needs of cards. It wants a system to automate the functions of record keeping and report generation; and which could help in executing the different searches in a faster manner. It also wants the system to handle the financial details.
In this regard, management committee of the library has given this project to your company, ABC Incorporated, to perform the automation of the library’s functions. As the Chief Systems Analyst of ABC Incorporated, you are to lead the project team to execute this project.
- Design five reports that should be generated from the proposed Library Management System for the above project.
- Construct Entity Relationship Diagrams for the scenario outlined for the above case study.