Lee County Public School System's Technology Initiative

The development of a library management software package that could provide library automation to every media center in the school system via the WAN was essential to meeting state requirements for technology funding. The library software package that Lee County has developed meets these requirements plus much more.

In addition to the basic state requirements to manage conventional library materials, this package integrates the Internet with a conventional library card catalog. The organization of the Internet is not anywhere near the precise organizational structure as has been developed and defined by the Library of Congress’s USMARC II record format. What Lee County’s library package does is catalog a subset of the Internet. This subset is defined with the specific cataloging and cross referencing of the USMARC II records of the conventional library holdings. Definition of a subset of the Internet using typical K-12 media center titles, ensures that current information obtained from the Internet is appropriate to the educational curriculum being used, and reduces the time necessary for lesson development.

This new library software supports the entire USMARC II record. Other library management packages meant for K-12 market usually only support a subset of the USMARC II record. The USMARC record is constantly being updated and revised and this will certainly be the case with the need to catalog digital materials becoming more and more vital. Lee County's library management package's ability to software define new aspects of the USMARC II record addresses this problem. This means their package will not have to be updated as frequently as other software packages.

Their library software application is designed to operate on a Windows NT platform and use Microsoft SQL server, an industrial database engine. The public access cataloging client of this package is provided using a web page. Thus, any existing computer that can run a web browser and connect to the Internet can have access to any school’s card catalog.

Other features include:

• Manual cataloging wizards to reduce training requirements of cataloging personnel.
  
• Record templates to ensure the accuracy of holdings records.
  
• Multi-Library combined with multi-Level security.
  
• On the fly cataloging.
  
• On screen representation of holdings in traditional card catalog format or detailed USMARC II record format.
  
• Periodical cloning for quick and easy cataloging of periodicals.