siddartha's blog

Spend 1/5th the amount on barcoding books in your library 

In libraries that have minimal budgets barcoding the books is a costly exercise. In this featured post we would like explain a procdure that brings down the cost by 6 times.
Please note that all the costs mentioned below are an approximation. You are requested to inquire the costs locally.
 
Let us take an example of a library that has 10,000 books.  
You need atleast 2 barcode stickers per book. Hence for 10,000 books you need 20,000 barcode stickers.
Cost of a barcode sticker: 1 cent
Cost of 20,000 barcode stickers: 200 USD
A barcode printer which must be specially purchased by the library costs approximately 500 USD.
Cost of a barcode scanner costs: 120 USD
The total cost comes to 820 USD
 

Build library catalog in your native language script 

-Do you have books that are in your native language(For example: Chinese, Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Indic scripts, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, European languages, Russian, Vietnamese, Marathi, Asian languages, etc... )?
-Do you want to catalog these books in your native language script? Especially avoid transliterating in English?
-If you are not sure whether your users can type and search in native language script, do you alternatively want to enter data transliterated in English also. Thus allowing catalog searchable both in native language script and English.

If yes, NewGenLib is the right ILS for you. NewGenLib supports Unicode 4.0. Its uses the right technologies and works with contemporary technologies to give you a pleasant experience. The below are the mentioned use cases supported by NewGenLib.

Use case 1: My library has catalog in many languages
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