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... wrote: > > No, i think library software is what I am looking for. either way, > something has to be modified to make it what it isn't. Bartering software > would need a library catalog attached to it. > So far every person in this thread who actually works with library software, once they understood your requirements, disagrees with you, thinks you're going to have trouble making any standard library software do that, shrug. My own personal recommendation again, is: * Seperate the "circulation" control from the "discovery", those are two different problems * I would suggest you need an inventory/circulation system that keeps track of: The inventory of items available for borrowing; who owns what item; who has borrowed what item; what the due date is; the list of "who"s, owners and borrowers. [This system does NOT have/need a good search interface for end users, it is a back end system]. ** We know of no traditional ILS system that will do this easily, specifically the part where each item is "owned" by one of your "patrons". But most traditional ILS systems are very complicated, because they support all sorts of OTHER stuff which you do NOT need. ** So I suggest you do not look to an ILS for this, you look for a "barter" application, or you look to write a homegrown application. * Now for actual "discovery", you export all the data from that first system to a Solr-based system. Could be VuFind or Blacklight, could be something non-library specific, could be something homegrown. The Solr-based system allows people to search through your inventory -- and by calling out behind the scenes to the 'inventory' system, can display whether th book is 'onloan', what it's due date is, etc. Yes, this "call out" stuff is kind of a pain, welcome to the world of all of us putting solr front-ends on our ILSs. But by using NOT an ILS, using some actually much simpler and more sanely developered software, this will be _easier_ than using an ILS, most of which are very complicated beasts, because they do a bunch of stuff you don't need. I really don't think you're going to have any luck using any traditional ILS software for what you describe, it's not what it was designed for. But of course you can try whatever you like, let us know how it turns out. And that's probably all I have to say on the topic.