Public Library Data over Time

Question

I'm working on creating a better way to view the history of items held at the public library I work at. I have been using a combination of the built in functions of SirsiDynix (our library software), Excel, and Autohotkey to extract, manipulate, and display the data. I am currently stuck on designing a way to view the change in status of an item over time since the system as it is only shows based on the last transaction. For example, if I have the following item:

0000519227318   005.54 WAL  101 EXCEL 2013 TIPS, TRICKS & TIMESAVERS    Walkenbach, John, author    WE-WH   2013    7   7/13/2013   6/29/2015   35

I can tell you it was created on 7/13/2013, last checked out on 6/29/2015, and has been checked out a total of 7 times. But I am unable to tell you anything about the length of those checkouts, or when they occurred, or if the book had been missing for a year in the middle of that time period.

With Autohotkey and the SirsiDynix Director's Station I have been able to create "daily snapshot" csv files that indicate where an item is every day. However I am having trouble figuring out how to consolidate that information. Originally I was planning to simply add an additional column to the end of the record every day so that after the general item information you would have a series of numbers listing the changing location. The coding I have for AHK to do this is somewhat slow and I'm still working on how I would best display it in Excel regardless. However it occurred to me that there may be a much better way to handle this that could fully automate the process.

So I'm asking whether there are suggestions for either a simple database system to use or an improvement to my current method that could assist me. The queries I plan to do are simply to be able primarily to type in an item number and have a chart display the status of an item, hopefully with something that could also show whenever the total checkouts has increased. I have been looking at Stock Market charts as examples but as many people with those seem to want open,close,hi,low values the responses they get seem beyond what I may need. Additional queries of items with the longest period of time on the shelf relative to total time would be useful although not initially required.

Any help as to what direction I may want to go would be appreciated. I have basic understanding of AutoHotKey and Excel, and I briefly used MySQL several years ago so I have a general feel of how a database can be used.

Answer 1

Not too familiar with your specific software or Autohotkey but for an efficient, secure, and scalable solution, consider any type of relational database management system (RDMS) including server level enterprise systems (some open-source or proprietary): Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, PostgreSQL, MySQL; or file level databases including SQLite and MS Access. One main thing is to try to move out of the concept of flatfile spreadsheets and applications. Excel is simply not a database and should be only used an end-use document for reporting or graphics/analytics using retrieved database content.

With a relational database you can maintain data across normalized related tables linked together by primary and foreign keys. Essentially, you want to build a Library Management System which can comprise of the following tables:

1. Items -unique list of Items ISBN, Catalog, Title, Author, Publisher, Category (Fiction, Nonfiction, Reference, Media); Primary Key: ItemID (autonumber/auto-increment)
2. Stock -copies of Items, Condition, Missing/Damaged Status, Cost, and Inventory Quantity; one-to-many relationship with Items table; Primary Key: StockID, Foreign Key: ItemID
3. Checkouts -infinite history of checkout record including Stock Item, CheckoutDate, CheckinDate, Notes; many-to-many relationship with Stock; Primary Key: CheckoutID, Foreign Key: StockID

Now with this schema, you can better manage each Item throughout its life cycle (new or arrived item, checked out periods, and retired/discard/basement stored) with easy queries for real-time reporting. Additionally, you can use any type of general purpose language (Java, C#, PHP, Python, Perl, VB) which can connect to any aforementioned RDMS to build the interface or tool for this backend system. A host of free consoles are also available including:

• PhpMyAdmin (PHP/MySQL)
• PgAdmin (PostgreSQL)
• SQLite-manager (Firefox addin/SQLite)
• Management Studio (SQL Server)
• MS Access (Jet/ACE Engine and MS Office) the often misnomer to conflate MS Access as a database when it is actually a GUI that connects by default to a Windows technology, the JET/ACE SQL engine, where this default can be switched out to any aforementioned RDMS

Here, Excel can connect via ODBC/OLEDB VBA for reporting on checked out items status, history, and current shelf stock. Depending on the RDMS, you can even build triggers where as soon as an item is checked out, a record is added to CheckOut table or code it in you tool or scripts. Finally, outputs into txt, csv, xml, pdf reports, email attachments to co-workers, board, etc can be integrated.