About the India Habitat Centre (IHC) library
The Habitat Library & Resource Centre (HLRC) is the intellectual hub of the India Habitat Centre and provides a serene haven for those interested in pursuit of knowledge, research and documentation. Habitat resource centre is having a collection of 35K books, journals and periodicals.
Business Need
They were using LIBSYS client server version since 1999 however keeping in view of their requirement of integration with other in-house applications they migrated to web centric LIBSYS 7 software in 2013.
Challenges
- They wanted to have single membership access cards across all applications. The membership database was maintained by some other application. Hence, LIBSYS had to integrate the card as well as develop the process to populate membership data from that application in real-time mode into the web centric LIBSYS 7 software.
- Customizations were needed to accommodate their special family membership requirement.
- Since library is open 7 days a week and always buzzing with the members, implementation of both LIBSYS 7 software and LSmart RFID system had to be done without any downtime.
LIBSYS Solution
LSmart-RFID system was implemented along with LIBSYS 7 software at IHC. LIBSYS 7 software was implemented on Windows Server with MySQL database running on Linux platform. Membership data is populated and validated in realtime from centralized database. The RFID cards are validated with third party database for performing transactions. E-mail integration is done with MS-Exchange.
Benefits
- LIBSYS 7 software has helped IHC to cater to their members with library services using the same membership card across all applications and systems available at IHC. Library staff was relieved of the task of creating membership data manually as data is populated in real-time mode without any human intervention.
- Use of RFID cards and multi-factor authentication has ensured additional security.
- With state of the art web OPAC and LIBSYS 7 software, the library has improved its visibility, service quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
