About ReservesDirect
From ReservesDirect: Open Source EReserves System
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System requirements
Hardware
To date, ReservesDirect has run successfully on a dual Xeon system with 1GB of system memory and 500GB of storage space. Hardware requirements will, of course, vary depending upon the number of users served and the quantity of data stored.
Large MySQL databases can place significant demands both on processing resources and on system memory. We recommend at least the following:
- A 1.0GHz Pentium III processor or equivalent
- 512MB of system memory
Storage of many PDF files will quickly consume hard disk space. For a system that will serve about 25,000 to 50,000 electronic reserve documents, we recommend at least the following:
- 200GB of hard disk storage, preferably SCSI RAID 5
In order to accept documents via fax, the server should be equipped with one or more fax modems:
- External serial fax modem (http://www.hylafax.org/howto/install.html) compatible with Hylafax
Software
ReservesDirect requires the following software:
- PHP 5.x +
- MySQL 4.x +
In order to ingest faxes, the following are required:
- Hylafax fax processing server
- Fax2PDF
- GNU Ghostscript
Supported platforms
ReservesDirect has been developed primarily for Linux environments, but will probably also work on Windows servers that have the prerequisite software installed (unsupported). ReservesDirect has been tested on RedHat Enterprise 3 and Fedora Core 3.
Supported browsers
ReservesDirect was designed using open standards with the intention of creating a program that could be used in any modern browser. ReservesDirect is *not* supported in Netscape 4.x or IE 3. While ReservesDirect should work in just about any modern browser, we have tested and confirmed full functionality in the following:
- Firefox 1.0 (This was the main development browser and is our preferred environment.)
- Netscape 7.x
- IE 5 and above (Windows and Mac)
- Mozilla 1.4 and above
- Safari 1.0 and above
History
The early seed of ReservesDirect was a simple database application, dubbed "Carryover", developed at Emory University's General Libraries (http://web.library.emory.edu/) in 2001. The Carryover system was an initial response to the complaints of instructors that when they taught the same class they had taught two or three semesters before, they had to re-request all materials for the class through paper forms. Instructors wanted an easy way to see everything they had put on reserve for a class the last time they had taught it, and an easy way to indicate what readings they wanted to use again. At this time the Emory libraries were still using an ILS-based reserves package (from Sirsi) to manage both physical and online reserves.
As electronic reserves became more popular, faculty at Emory began asking for capabilities to sort and annotate their reading lists, functionality that Sirsi's reserves module did not offer. In addition, staff workload in processing electronic reserves was intensive, requiring a pool of temp employees for the first ten weeks of each semester in order to handle the processing load at the main library. The need arose, driven by faculty requests, for a flexible electronic reserves system that would allow faculty to manipulate their reserve lists and add their own materials. The system would also have to integrate with the ILS so that students would have only one place to go for both physical and electronic materials on reserve, and integration with Blackboard, which was being increasingly used by the faculty, was also highly desirable. After looking at commercial electronic reserves products, some of which came close to these requirements, but none of which quite fit the bill, the library decided to build on the original Carryover system as an experiment to see if a home-grown solution would be sustainable.
Ross Singer, a developer for the General Libraries, in collaboration with reserves staff, built a new application on top of the Carrover database called "Course Control" and designed a public web interface to the application called Reserves Direct. The system allowed instructors to upload their own documents and fax in articles that were instantly converted to PDF. Instructors could manipulate their reserves lists by sorting and annotating readings, and could add "proxies" that had permission to edit a particular class. In addition, they could export their reserves lists to Blackboard using a dynamic RSS link that updated Blackboard whenever a change was made in Reserves Direct. The system also integrated directly with Sirsi Unicorn so that staff could process physical items entirely in the Reserves Direct environment. Spring of 2003 saw an initial pilot of the system with a handful of instructors, and the following summer was spent making tweaks and upgrades. The full version of Reserves Direct (v. 0.7) went live in Fall 2003 for seven of the eight libraries on the Emory campus. In addition, it was released as an open source project on SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/coursecontrol/).
The self-service features of Reserves Direct had an immediate impact on staffing levels required to process the initial wave of reserves during "crunch time" at Emory's main library. The system was very popular with instructors and students alike and usage climbed rapidly. Despite the popularity of the system, or because of it, instructors began to use it in ways that had not been anticipated and began requesting new functionality, in particular the ability to have multiple instructors able to manipulate a single list of reserves for one class (otherwise known as team teaching). The old Carryover database that lay at the heart of the Reserves Direct was simply not designed to handle the kind of functionality that instructors were requesting, nor could it be modified any further. A decision was made early in Spring 2004 to completely rewrite the system from the ground up, and development of a new, object-oriented system, based on MySQL and PHP 5, began. The object was to create a system that was both flexible and scalable, one that not only met requests for current functionality but that could accomodate requests for new functionality for years to come.
ReservesDirect 2 went live for all of the Emory libraries on November 22, 2004. The development team for version 2 consisted of Jason White, Kathy Washington, Maurice York, and Kyle Fenton. The system was developed in collaboration with library staff from all of Emory's libraries. The system is in active development. The current development cycle anticipates a major release each summer, with regular updates throughout the year.
