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Computerized System for Textbook Rental Library for University

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Added on  2019-10-18

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This article describes the tasks performed by a textbook rental library for a university. It covers the tasks performed before, during and after a term. The article talks about obtaining student and faculty lists, obtaining course section lists, obtaining textbook adoption forms, ordering new textbooks, checking in and out books, and performing yearly inventory and reports.

Computerized System for Textbook Rental Library for University

   Added on 2019-10-18

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Textbook Rental Library (TRL) SpecificationOverviewWe wish to design a computerized system for automating the operations of a textbook rental library (“Rental”) for a university. The Rental is a university service that allows anundergraduate student to check out their required textbooks for courses in which they are enrolled. Part of each student’s semester services fee goes to supporting the operation of the Rental. This fee is paid at the beginning of each semester, and the Rental is not responsible for this billing.The University offers multiple sections of courses during its two main terms (Fall and Spring Semester), as well as during its two shorter terms (Summer and Winter Terms, thelatter between the Fall and Spring Semesters). Courses are offered by a university department and are numbered from 001-999. Sections are numbered from 01-99, with each taught by a single professor. Each University course section may use a number of different textbook titles, with students expected to check out a copy of each textbook for each course section in which they are enrolled.The Rental physically houses and manages the stacks of copies of textbooks for student checkout before the start of each of these university sessions. The Rental is responsible for a number of different functions related to textbook purchasing, circulation, and inventory. At various times during the year, different Rental tasks must be performed, and it should be easy for the manager to determine which such scheduled tasks have been performed at any given time, and which tasks are due or yet to be performed.Here is a description of these tasks, organized by the time of year they are typically performed.Before a Term BeginsThe Rental obtains an initial list of students in the upcoming term, including such student info as name, id number, class status, local and permanent addresses, and phone number.
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This list is “downloaded” from the university mainframe for the upcoming session. This initial list changes frequently, with changes available on a daily basis.Some of these students are new, and some are continuing (i.e. a continuing student may still have a record tracked by the Rental, including overdue books checked out to them). A list of active faculty and staff is obtained in a similar fashion. A downloaded list of all student-section enrollments (one student enrolled in one particular course section) is also obtained. Of course, students may add or drop course sections after the initial enrollments are obtained, so that regular daily updates to the list must be obtained.The Rental also obtains a list of course sections (or just sections) that the university plans to offer in the upcoming term. Each such section includes course information (with department identifier and course number), plus a section number, along with a maximum enrollment limit. A single professor teaches each such section. These sections may be added, dropped, or modified by the University after the initial class list is obtained, with daily updates available. Using this class list, the Rental plans the issue of textbooks to students for the upcoming term. Towards this end, the Rental sends out adoption forms (both regular campus mail with printed copies and email) to each professor, listing which classes he/she is scheduledto teach. Each course has an associated candidate list of textbook titles for use in it, though this list may change as per professor preference. The professor is expected to specify which textbook titles they wish to require for each section they teach, filling out and returning the form.A returned adoption form may request the use of a textbook already present in the Rental stacks (used before), or else a textbook that is completely new to the Rental (and which thus must be ordered for the first time). Such a new textbook may replace an existing textbook, with the replaced textbook being discontinued and withdrawn from circulation. If withdrawn, the discontinued textbook title and all copies are removed from the inventory and sold to a used book company if possible, or else sold at a greatly reduced price to students.Professors usually return their textbook adoption forms by a pre-term deadline date to theRental, though they sometimes need multiple reminders. If they do not return a form, theRental assumes that they will not be using any textbooks in their course sections.Each returned form specifies all textbook titles to be used within a particular course section. These textbooks may be new, or continuing: the latter are already on the shelvesand are available for immediate use.After a professor’s adoption form has been returned, the Rental processes it and enters its information into the system. Using this information, shelf tags are created for each
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