Web Based Library Management System for Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology (PGIAR) - University of Kelaniya.

Abstract

Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology (PGIAR) University of Kelaniya has one of the best libraries in the country. Their collection has over 20,000 items, including books, documents, maps and photographs. It has a total registered membership of more than 1000 persons. The library uses a manual system to handle functions such as lending, returns, reservations, catalogue management and member management. This raises many issues such as reduction in the efficiency of the services provided by the library, inability to generate relevant reports in a timely manner, and the limited access to the library catalogue. The proposed system is a Web Based Library Management System which overcomes the issues mentioned above by helping the Library Staff including the Librarian in performing normal library functions. It reduced the work load of the library staff automating some tasks such as calculating fines and notifying users of overdue books. Since the system is a web based system, the library catalogue can be accessed from anywhere. The system was implemented using NetBeans 7.2.1 as the IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Apache was used as the web server and MySQL was used to handle database functionalities while PHP (Hypertext Pre-Processor) was used as the server side scripting language. Microsoft Visio 2007 was used to draw the UML (unified Modeling Language) diagrams. At the end of this process the system was hosted on the Internet as a successful implementation.