Web based Library Management System For Bandaranayake Memorial Public Library Homagama

Abstract

"Reading makes a full man". It is a famous quote among all over the world, which was made by Sir Francis Bacon [1561 1626]. In that meaning, a library is the maternity to deliver a full man to mother earth. The Public Library of Homagama has been holding the title as the Main Library in the Homagama Local Government area for the last few decades. However, the busy lifestyle has affected the reading habit of people. Therefore the number of readers who visit the Public library have lessen, and because of the inefficiency of the Library staff, readers are de-motivated further. Meanwhile Information Technology has emerged as a great infrastructure, where a lot of related and non related fields look into improve their productivity with the use of IT. The decision was taken by the Administration Committee of Homagama Public Library to hold hands of this amazing technology to bring its old glory back. The intention was clear to automate the Library System. It was expected to expedite the replying of queries made by members, reservations, lending, renewing and returning of books. Furthermore, the system was expected to go online, where members can do reservations and renewals of books from their Personal Computers via internet. It expected to reduce number of times that a member has to come to library premises. The system was built according to the Three-Tier Architecture using Object Oriented Techniques. Unified Modelling Language with StarUML has been used to document the Analysis and Design of the System. The Implementation was done using programming languages such as PHP and JavaScript. Databases were constructed using MySQL. Apache was the web server used inside the development and testing environment and Microsoft Dreamweaver, XAMPP are two of main tools used within. Implementation of project has eased the work load of library staff which led to increase the productivity of library. It was noticed a rise within library members and things are getting better. Considering all the plus points the system brought in, The Administrative Committee is in the consideration of adding a recommender system for readers in to the current system