Question

A LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM is a Public Library. Currently it has about 300 members. A person who is 18 or above can become a member. There is a membership fee of USD 100 for a year. There is a personal details form to be filled . 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 USD 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. For issue of books, each member has three 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 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. 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 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. 1. Identify and explain fifteen problems confronting the current the Library Management System.

Answer 1

Problems Found in the Current Library Management System:

1.Membership Details are filled in the paper forms, and it has to be maintained till the membership.

If Forms are lost, or detoriates the information may get lose.

2.Membership cards can be lose by the user or by the library.

Library has to maintain the memership cards, someone has a work to maintian those cards, which is a non value added activity.

3.Accounts has to be maintained by seperate people  for the memerhsip and fine charges.

There is need of accountant who can manage all the money transactions. Without him the money handling process in difficult for other people in the management

4.Record details for the books are maintained by the library in paper format.

If anyone want to know about the book details, they should check the record which has more than 5000 books, Its is very hard to find a required book. If records are lost, management find the record very later not instantlly.

5.Records need to be mainted and safeguarded from water, fire.

Records can be lost by natural calamities.

6. Supplier detail records are maintained by the library in paper format.

People has to search in "N"number of supplier to find the desired supplier, to compare supplier it has to be done manually.

7.Maintaining and recirculating the cards is cumbersome.

Cards can detoriate in time,sorting, cleaning,updating and numbering the cards is cumbersome.

8.Library management as well as members takes long time to find the books availability.

To check the books availability members has to manually verify the availability of the book.

9.Status of the books are in paper format.

To check the status of the book such as Reference Book, Reserved,.. those things need to be manually checked.

10. Creating reports for books issued, books in the library, members, and accounts is tidious.

Creating the reports is very hards, it cannot be done by single person. If so, it takes much and time and tidious.

11.Library management unable to manage more than 250 membership manullay.

Managing more than 250 members is very hard for the library management due to paper based information, and flow of information is very low.

12. Paper Record makes the library management process more difficult to track a book as well as user.

To find all the details about a book as well user, like Last readings by the member, how many times the book is rented by the members, Total income from the book.

13. It is Very hard to find what are all the books the user has with their cards.

It is very hard to find what are all the books member rented with his membership cards.

14,Paper based records, and Card process makes the book delivery time high.

Members have to fill forms, write records such book lending records and sign it, which makes the delivery process high and most of the time there will be a Queue at book transaction counter.

15.Paper based records cannot be used very effectively by more than one person at a time.

Paper based record cannot be used very effectively as information is written on paper, more than one person cannot use it at the same time.