Page 246 - DLIS003_LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT

Unit 13: Records and Reports

Notes
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 ` 2 per day after the due return date is
charged. If 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 transaction. 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. There are other problems also that the library staff is facing. Like,
in case of issue of duplicate cards to a member when member or library staff loses the card.
It is very difficult to check the genuinity of the problem.

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 250 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 400 to 1000 for
yearly and 500 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; 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. The system is to handle the financial
details.

Questions
1. How does the library maintain the records?
2. Comment on the basic problem with the Noida Library system and give your
recommendations to resolve the problems.

Source: http://www.uobabylon.edu.iq/eprints/pubdoc_10_30250_1424.doc.

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