“ABCD (Automatización de Bibliotecas y Centros de Documentación) is a suite of softwares that integrates applications for online automation of the mais library and documentation centres functions. The system covers database creation and management, cataloging a collection of documents, import and export of records, acquisitions, loans, statistics, serials control, a public catalog online and administrative tools, besides advanced loans module.”

“ABCD (Automatización de Bibliotecas y Centros de Documentación) é um conjunto de software que integra aplicações online para automação de biblioteca e centros de documentação. O sistema cobre a criação da base de dados e administração…” Veja texto na integra em inglês

ABCD system for library automation is reviewed during international workshop

ABCD (Automatización de Bibliotecas y Centros de Documentación) is a suite of softwares that integrates applications for online automation of the mais library and documentation centres functions. The system covers database creation and management, cataloging a collection of documents, import and export of records, acquisitions, loans, statistics, serials control, a public catalog online and administrative tools, besides advanced loans module.

In order to give a boost on the system development a workshop was held from March 17-27, 2009, in Brussels, Belgium, with 23 participants. They worked together with five key-players that work on the development of ABCD to test the software functionalities and the documentation. The meeting was organized previously the final publication of a first official release by September 2009.

ABCD is a free and open source project developed under the coordination of the Latin-American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME/PAHO/WHO) and supported by VLIR/UDC (Flemish University Development Co-operation) with the project Development Of and Capacity Building in ISIS Based Library Automation Systems (Docbiblas).

The participants represented 16 university libraries and other academic institutions from Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Perú, Philippine, South Africa, Suriname, Tanzania, Uruguay, Venezuela as well as partners of VLIR/UOS, who co-sponsored not only the ABCD-development but also the workshop itself with its project Docbiblas.

The workshop was under the coordination of Dr. Egbert de Smet, Project leader for VLIR/UOS/Docbiblas. “It is important to note that the participants were not selected for their interest or link with ISIS, some of them having used ISIS indeed, others however using other (commercial) library systems” says Smet.

After an introduction on ISIS and ABCD, all the modules of the ‘Suite’ were presented: the Central part with database management, cataloging, acquisition, loans and statistics modules, the OPAC and Site parts (with Site Manager), the Serials Control System and the Advanced Loans module (EmpWeb). For the first time the Central Acquisitions and Loans modules were demonstrated by Guilda Ascencio, systems analist and consultant who was participating along with Ernesto Spinak, part of the team of developers of ABCD.

Also a first ever was the presentation of the Advanced Loans module (introducing web-services, multiple-server/catalog/loans policy and ‘MySite’ functions) by Emiliano Marmonti, consultant participating on the initiative.

As part of the workshop, the rich ‘ISIS-Family’, especially the advanced ISIS-database management possibilities of the CISIS-tools were demonstrated. “The idea was to explain that ABCD-users will not only get the system itself but also lots of possibilities to create scripts for quality-control and many other types of management, such as conversion techniques”, says Piet de Keyser, VLIR/UOS evaluator from the University of Amberes.

During the workshop, Dr. Alan Hopkinson from the UDC-Consortium offered to incorporate the Universal Decimal Classificación (UDC) as an authority file for testing purposes (with a temporary ‘project’-license for a very sharp price).

“Quite some smaller pending bugs were noted, quite some of them meanwhile have been solved, others will be solved in the next upcoming releases up to v.1.0” commented Spinak.

Recommendations at the end given by the participants refer to the need to split the training into two parts (one for librarians, one for IT-experts) giving also some more time e.g. to discuss bibliographic formats and the ISIS-formatting language. The strongest recommendation was to ensure further training opportunities all over the world to support the high interest in implementing the software.

To this end it is worth mention the fact that not only an official manual on ABCD (‘The ABC of ABCD’) will be available very soon (in English and shortly later in Spanish and French), but also ‘Tutorials’ have been produced in India, showing the most relevant sequences of the use of ABCD-modules with commented screenshots.

As the main conclusions of the formal workshop evaluation questionnaire, there were mentioned that all parts or criteria of the workshop scored above the middle point (3 out of 5). Besides that, more than half of the participants agreed or strongly agreed with the statement not only to ‘recommend the use of ABCD’ and that it ‘used appropriate technical approach for their library’, but also to effectively plan to use the software in their libraries.

The version of ABCD resulting from the workshop was published by mid April as version 0.6 – the first complete version except for some reservation functions in the circulation module; and before the end of September version 1.0 is expected to be ready together with the manuals and tutorials.

BIREME is already publishing everything, accompanied by a development WIKI/Trac system, in a dedicated ABCD-website.

“We believe the workshop was very useful and successful as an experience to test the software and its accompanying materials to be now used in hopefully many more training efforts worldwide”, adds Spinak.

Written by: BIREME/PAHO/WHO
12.05.2009 16:09:45 h
Updated by: BIREME/PAHO/WHO
26.05.2009 14:37:23 h

espacio.bvsalud.org

 | Enviar por e-mail  | Hits para esta publicação: 825