Michael D. Cooper

Professor Emeritus

School of Information

University of California, Berkeley

Information on Downloading the Software Accompanying my Book

My book, Cooper, Michael D. Design of Library Automation Systems: File Structures, Data Structures, and Tools. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1996. ISBN 0-471-13884-3, 638pp. describes the basic concepts of library automation and procedures for implementing library automation systems. If you are interested in studying the programs or using the tools, You may want to:
Download a gzipped version (405K) or a compressed version (810K) of the Library Automation Toolkit Version 2.0

Details about the Software

Here are more detail that might help you decide whether to download the system:

The book describes the basic concepts of library automation and procedures for implementing library automation systems. A second level of understanding comes from developing systems yourself and to aid the process I have provided a set of tools. These tools are described in the book, and the C programs that implement the tools are available here. The tools are stored in a number of directories and associated with most tools are driver programs. The idea is that the tools can be integrated into your own library automation system, but you can also take the tools for a test drive by using them with the driver programs supplied. For example if you are interested in seeing how the b-tree indexing program works, look at the files in the directory Btree. If you want to build your own b-tree file, go to the BtreeDrv directory, compile the code, and start up the executable program. It will present you with a menu from which you can initialize the file and then add, change, delete, and display records. The same thing holds for most of the other tools.

Several other points about the layout of the files: the Docs directory provides limited documentation for the files in each directory with pointers to the relevant chapters of the book where you can find more information. The Headers directory contains all the header files for all the tools, and the Data directory contains some base data files that you may need.

There are two applications (as opposed to tools) in this suite of functions. The first is an accounting system and the second is a vendor system. The accounting system uses many of the tools to create a simple operational accounting system with a visual front-end. The vendor system creates a simple system that lets you create vendor records which are stored as variable-length MARC-like records in a file. Each of these applications is intended to illustrate how you can couple the tools together to make an operational system. Other applications are in the works and will be announced real soon now.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

To say that putting this package together was done on a shoestring is to understate the problem. This means that the software will not run on every imaginable platform. Specifically it has only been tested on a SUN Sparcstation running the Solaris 2.4 Operating System. It has been compliled ONLY with the Free Software Foundation's gcc compiler. I can not make any statement about whether it will work on other platforms. Sorry.

INSTALLATION

The toolkit has a top level make file which in turn calls make files in each of the directories. To build the software edit the file Config.make in the top most directory. This file is sourced by all the make files. Most importantly edit the field TOOL_SOURCE to indicate where you have placed the source code. You'll notice that many directory pathes refer to TOOL_SOURCE. Once you have edited Config.make, you can run the make file. Type "make all" to make ALL of the drivers and libraries and systems. This may take a while. Alternatively you can go into any subdirectory and make all to make its contents.

Type "make allspotless" to delete all the objectfiles, libraries, and executables.

QUESTIONS

If you have suggestions, questions, or comments about the software, please send them to me at the following email address: cooper atnospam ischool.berkeley.edu. I am generally not around during the summer so you may have to wait until the beginning of September to get a response.

My mailing address is:

Michael Cooper
School of Information
South Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-4600
USA
Phone: +1 (510) 642-1692
Fax: +1 (510) 642-5814
Email: cooper atnospam ischool.berkeley.edu
Home page: http://beachmat.berkeley.edu/~mike