PERFORMING AN ELECTRONIC INVENTORY USING A PDA

摘要

Located in North Orange County, California, Cypress College is a community college and administers to the academic, occupational, and special interest needs of over 16,000 commuter students. Four full-time librarians, four adjunct librarians, and six paraprofessionals staff the library. During the summer of 2002, Cypress College Library performed a successful electronic inventory of the nearly 70,000-item collection using a personal digital assistant (PDA), several interactive programs, and a MicroSoft Access query and report. The software was designed to work in conjunction with the Endeavor Voyager integrated library management system circulation module and its Oracle database. Except for the cost of two PDAs, we acquired the software free of charge. This exciting new inventory system validated the integrity of our online catalog, and as a consequence, improved professional services to our library's diverse population of community college users. We hope that other libraries may benefit from our experience, perhaps even modifying our results to work within the requirements of their own system.