Unresolved Questions

The following is a list of questions that have been brought up by our design team, Along with the questions, you will find our suggestions if found necessary. We hope to cover the grey areas in our next meetings.

Recall

• Will there be more than one person on a que for hold once a hold a requested or do wish to put holds on books for only one library patron at a time? i.e. if one hold already exits on the book will you allow additional holds on the book?

customer: Yes, we would like to be able to place more than one hold (in a QUEUE) on a book.

• Once a book is recalled, how long will you allow the current book holder to return the book before you incur any late charges. (eg. suppose I have the book and you recalled it. How many days do I have to return the book before you lay late charges on my account?)

customer: A borrower has 2 weeks to return a recalled book before late charges are applied.

• Once the book is returned to the library, how long will you keep it on hold. will you hold it until it is picked up or will you return it to shelf after a few days?

customer: A borrower who recalls a book has 1 week (after the book is returned) to pick it up.

Borrowing a Book

• Will there be a limit as to how many books can a patron have on loan at any given time. i.e. is there a maximum? and if so will there be a separate maximum for diffirenet types or it is just the accumulation that you are concerned with?

customer: There is a default limit of 3 books that a borrower can have out at a time. The librarian should be able to change this limit. Please see our informal specification.

Security

• Would you like to be able to add, delete, and update the existing security passwords? will want to associate a password with a set of possible functions on the system?(eg. some librarians can remove outstanding fines and some can't.)

customer: We only want to be able to change the current password (remember that we only want one). We do not require different access levels on the system.

Remove a Book

• For security reasons, we would like to suggest that you change this fuction so that you will be able to update the status of the book to either 'missing' or 'Archive' which means that the book was once part of the circulating stacks. However, it is now missing or due to some reasons it is kept in the archives.(the reason could be lack of space or the age of the book or a fascimile copy is made electronically or or micro fische.) This will allow a safer mechanism to prevent removal of library items.

customer: We would prefer that these functions not be added. We are comfortable without the "Archive" command.

Borrower

• Would you like to keep a secondary address on file for the library patrons?

customer: Yes, a borrower's second address would be a nice feature.

• We suggest that you keep an area on the patron information to record any memos or notes to the patron.

customer: Yes, we like this idea.

Lending

• We feel that restrictions placed on the lending procedure, namely overdue books and outstanding fines, will create complications in extension of the loan period as well as lending additional books. Since the system will not distinguish between one day over due and one year overdue, it simply will disallow any further borrowing actions.

customer: It is not clear what your question is here. Each book should have a maximum fine which is equal to the cost of the book. Furthermore, once a borrower has an overdue book (even for one day) he cannot take another book out until the book is returned and the fine is paid.

• Our first suggestion is to deal with overdue books and outstanding fines in the report section by making a mailing list and continue to allow the borrower to take books on loan.

• Our second suggestion is to allow an override authorization to proceed with the transaction.

customer: We would like a mailing list of borrowers with overdue books or outstanding balances (this is something we asked for in our informal specification). Generally, it is not our policy to allow borrowers to take a book out if they have books overdue, but we should be able to change the due date of a book - so the overdue fines of the book will be removed.

Menu

• Do you wish to have a hierarchial menu system or you would prefer to have all of the system options available to you at once?

customer: We would like the system to be user-friendly. If a hierarchical menu system makes the system easy to use, please put it in.

Add a Book

• Since every physical copy of a book gets a different call number, we suggest that you allow the system to generate the multiple copies or multiple volume at once rather than calling the function over and over for different copy or voulme.

customer: Books should have a call number, nothing more. A call number is assigned to a book only by the librarian. The computer should not give a book some random call number. We already have call numbers for our books. It would disrupt our current library if we had to change the call numbers for all our books.

• We also suggest and additional task to print labels on the BOOK INFO SCREEN and ADD A BOOK section.

customer: We would like this feature.

Fines

• We suggest a break down on fines for different book types.(eg. hourly charge for one hour reserved books, daily charge for regular circulations, etc.)

customer: Our library only has one day reserved books - we do not have one hour reserved books. We do not require an hourly charge for overdue books. We need daily charges for both one day reserved books ($10 per day) and circulation books ($1 per day).

• We suggest that you keep an itemized history of fines that will contain borrower ID#, book call#, date borrowed, date due, date returned, amount incurred. This will provide a much more efficient mechanism to maintain a log of all fines as well as individual fines.

customer: Yes, we also believe this is a good idea. Please see our informal specification document under "Borrower Attributes".

Reports

• Print out of all books available in the library in the report section has raised some environmental concerns among the developer team. we feel that a printout of a complete list of all out and available books amount to a massive volume of print outs. Our suggestion is that we provide an option and or an error message to notify the librarian of the extent of the print out. i.e leave this as an option. However, it is possible to provide a mean to browes through the list of all available or out books. (please save a tree :-0)

customer: As mentioned earlier, we would like a choice of viewing the report on screen or on paper (via printing on the printer).

• What do you exactly mean by a strip down search in the borrowers section?

customer: By stripped down search, we mean the search shows us the borrower's name, ID, and fines.

Back to the CPSC 451 Supplier Group #5 Formal Index