Out of the stone age
A nice couple from our church donated software for us to computerize our church library catalog. Well, we tried it out today and it's a DOS-based system from 1985! Yikes, I'd forgotten how cumbersome computing was in that era. Remember all those BASIC commands you needed to copy files, open them, save? Remember swapping around 3 or 4 different disks to open the program, enter data, then save it? Oy vey. I'm glad technology has come a long way since then.

I think we're going to purchase a program called ResourceMate. The price is within our budget and the demo seemed pretty easy to use. It even allows you to import cataloging information from the Library of Congress database. We can later add capabilities to make our catalog searchable from the Web so that church members can see if we carry a book or video. It would be cool to eventually make our check-out system computerized too. We could more easily track overdues for one.

You wouldn't believe how far overdue some materials are--I think some items checked out as long ago as 1990 have never been returned. Aside from enstating a fine system, I'm not sure how to really beef up our current system of mailing overdue notices to patrons. What's really appropriate in a church setting? Public shaming in the church bulletin?