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Meetinghouse Library App

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 7:45 am
by earlythomasross
Hi,

I've recently been called to serve as Ward Technology Specialist and my wife has also been called as Ward Libarian.

I had the idea of a meetinghouse library application or some electronic way of keeping track of the books and resources in the library. This would be great as at the moment members (and maybe more importantly leaders) in the ward have know idea what resources are in the library that could be better utilised.

I don't know if an application like this already exists or if something like a shared
Google Spreadsheet might be an idea?

Thanks,

Tom

Re: Meetinghouse Library App

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 9:51 am
by genman
I like your idea.

Whether or not something like that is ever integrated into LDS.org, I still think it is good. You could do it now by just doing an inventory of the library contents and putting it into a google doc on google drive and make it public for anyone with the link. Then have the Ward Clerk or Executive Secretary use Send-A-Message to send an email with the link to everyone in the ward or at least to the leaders. And/or could include the link to it in the Ward Newsletter on an ongoing basis.

So you may have what you need right now to do this, unless you were talking about a more sophisticated system of being able to track which things are checked out, etc. The latter may be much harder, and things aren't usually checked out for long periods from the church library anyway. Probably 95% of the value of this, though, is just the total inventory of things in the library, organized by category. I know I would like to see that. Especially to see a list of all of the pictures that are there. Seems like whenever you need a picture for a class or something, it is hard to know what is there. A searchable list visible by all members and one that gives a picture number that can be easily found in the library would be great.

Thanks for sharing this idea.

Re: Meetinghouse Library App

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 12:33 pm
by russellhltn
I know the community had batted the idea of software to help out in the library, but I don't think anything became of that. However those discussions were before used smartphones became cheap and maybe even before meetinghouse internet. It might be worth re-opening those discussions.

Re: Meetinghouse Library App

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:12 pm
by jpmche
The bishopric first counselor of my ward was telling me that we are going to install a computer at the library to provide access to lds.org, print lessons etc. I was thinking about that, create an application and installed in the pc to keep inventory of library resources and eventually track the resources too. Also, use smartphones to scan/track the items will be nice too.