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Online catalog access software?
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Online catalog access software?
2:42 PM EDT 4/6/07
Hi there,

I'm looking to somehow create an online access catalog for a very small library. Right now we use MS Access, but I'm wondering if there's a way to make the catalog available on the intranet. I've mucked around with trying to do this with MS Access itself, but I have almost no experience with VB or SQL. Is there some kind of free (or very inexpensive) software where one could migrate the Access data so that it could easily be browsed online? We don't need any other kind of automation -- just a catalog display. I've searched around on the web, but it seems like one needs strong IT skills and fancy hardware to make this happen. Am I in over my head? Is there some very simple solution that I'm missing?

Thanks.
Re: Online catalog access software?
4:23 PM EDT 4/19/07 as a reply to Reece Dano.
Have you looked at Koha? It is an open source ILS - it provides more than the catalog/OPAC function, but if you did not want to use the other functions, I do not think that would impact the OPAC piece of it in any way.

I think it has an import function and would be fairly easy to do. The hardware requirements are not too strenuous and you could get help from their online community if you ran into problems.

There are other open source ILS options out there that are fairly minor as far as hardware requirements and all vary in the level of technical aptitude that you need to get them up and running.

If your largest considertaion is cost, then that would be the avenue that I would pursue. Are there other considerations that you have?
Re: Online catalog access software?
4:26 PM EDT 4/19/07 as a reply to Reece Dano.
Here is another thread on WJ that discusses Koha and has the links to the software:

http://webjunction.org/forums/click.jspa?searchID=14248&messageID=4930

And a list of open source ILSes on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_library_system
Re: Online catalog access software?
4:51 PM EDT 4/19/07 as a reply to Reece Dano.
Oh - and I forgot about this - you could also look at using LibraryThing if you are interested in just basically having a "catlog" acccessible on the web - the "upload" of the titles might take some time, but really would still require almost no effort assuming that your books are not so specialized of a collection that it cannot find them through its ISBN lookup function -

http://www.librarything.com/organizations.php