Abstract:
With the rush to deploy Information Technology in all service areas, there is
tremendous pressure on small and medium size (around 1 lakh holdings) libraries in
India to digitize their records. In doing so, Librarians wishing to go digital face the
risk of opting for platforms and back-ends not truly designed for managing library
records. The fact that designers of almost all Library Management Systems currently
popular, have opted for the Relational Database model in structuring library data,
further confounds the Librarian's choice and almost always leads to the deployment of
inappropriate tools. This article (tutorial) argues that Library records cannot be
conveniently cast in the conventional RDBMS framework without significant
modifications to the structures of Library data as librarians have conventionally
structured it, as well as key concepts in conventional RDBMS. It is the premise of this
article that these modifications can be made only at the risk of seriously detracting
from the effectiveness of the tools as well as the quality of the data. The premise here
is that Library data are not relational databases but catalogs in the sense that they
cannot be normalized to fit the canonical normal forms. An alternative framework of
tools (WWWISIS back-end from the ISIS family) and structured data (ISO 8059) is
suggested and explained.
