Need help from someone familiar with LibraryWorld Gold

January 23, 2007 6:57 AM

Attention tech-savvy librarians! I need some help from anyone who is familiar with the library cataloging software LibraryWorld Gold. Is there a way I can write some kind of batch utility to add a field and a tag to about a thousand records?

I'm helping out at the library of a local school. They need to add one field (containing four tags, with data in three of those tags) to the records of about a thousand books. Right now I am doing this as a data entry project, one record at a time. At the rate I'm going, with the time I have available, this project will be completed in about 10 years or so.

I'm a programmer, and was reasonably sure I could figure out a way to automate this process, but I've run into problems:

* Their system runs on an Apple network, and I only know my way around Windows machines.

* I haven't been able to find any helpful information from the software manufacturer's web site, or any other online forum, on how the files/database/whatever is set up behind the scenes. (Admittedly, part of the difficulty here is my unfamiliarity with the Apple OS.)

* Any documentation on the system that may have existed is currently misplaced or has been thrown out (!!).

So, can anyone give me some clue as to where to start? Or if this is even possible?

posted by SuperSquirrel to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Can you get the company to send you a PDF of some documentation or something? Have you checked for an AppleScript dictionary? Have you seen if it has an functions that can be scripted with Automator?

I have no knowledge of LibraryWorld, but a lot of recent specialized database-y apps I've used on OS X have used SQLite as their data store (NetNewsWire and SpamSieve. The data file is often stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Name-o-Application.

Might be worth a look. I've used Aqua Data Studio on my Mac for quick edits to SQL schtuff.

(If it's not SQLite database, maybe you could report back as to what you've found in Application Support for the application.)

(Oh and remember that often in OS X you can right-click or control-click a "package" of an application or data file and dig inside the contents using the popup menu. That may help you find some bits and bobs you've overlooked--for example, some kind of plain-text data like a plist or xml file that could be fiddled with in a text editor.)
posted by bcwinters at 7:45 AM on January 23, 2007

http://libraryworld.net/ -- "All software programs come with one full year of technical support. You have an option to renew that support on an annual basis."

But even if you're no longer covered, write to support ([e-mail]), explain the situation, and see if they are willing to help you or send you some electronic documentation.
posted by pracowity at 7:45 AM on January 23, 2007

Here's another lead. This review mentions that LibraryWorld has pretty robust import and export features in several "standard" formats used by libraries.

Perhaps you could export all your data, crack it open in a text editor like BBEdit or TextMate, find the books with the "right" field information, copy, scroll, paste paste paste, etc.

If you're feeling programmy you could do some quick regex magic at that point to save your pasting finger.
posted by bcwinters at 7:49 AM on January 23, 2007

By the way, as someone who works for a nonprofit and deals with annoying databases with no documentation all the time: document everything you do, even if that just means dumping a new manual in a folder with a couple printouts explaining your workaround. If you ever have to work on the system again, you'll thank yourself, as will any future volunteers!
posted by bcwinters at 7:57 AM on January 23, 2007

I have zero experience with LibraryGold (I maintain a Voyager catalog, lucky me!), but I suggest you send this question to the kindly geeks at the Code4Lib discussion list and perhaps the Web4Lib list. (Or some other, more appropriate list I don't know about; anybody have any suggestions?) Someone, somewhere, has probably done this with LibraryWorld.

Can you batch import/export records? You could always do a dump of the records you want to modify, use MARCEdit to break the MARC file into a usable text file and to do a batch add/edit, then recreate the MARC file and reload it back into the database. (If this is not clear, e-mail me.) I'm sure there are more elegant solutions, though...
posted by arco at 9:20 AM on January 23, 2007

If it really does export to "many common formats", MARC should be one of them. Parsing a MARC file is reasonably easy. The just find the appropriate MARC tag to add/edit and you're good to go :)
posted by jdfan at 12:30 PM on January 23, 2007

Response by poster: Thank you all for such great responses. (I don't know which one(s) to mark as best yet until I can get back to school with some uninterrupted computer time.) But now I at least have a little bitty clue for what to look for next. I really appreciate it, everyone! I will follow up when I make some progress.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 1:00 PM on January 24, 2007