SLiMS is an acronym for Senayan Library Management System. Originally developed by the Ministry of National Education Library to replace Alice (http://www2.softlinkint.com). The main goal is that the Ministry of National Education Library has the freedom to use, study, modify and distribute the software used. SLiMS, then released under the GPL license and now development of SLiMS is done by its user community. Origin After operating for more than 50 years, for several reasons the BC Indonesia Library, which has been the mainstay of BC services in Indonesia for many years, had to be closed. The management of BC Indonesia then took the initiative to donate the management of its library assets into the hands of government institutions. In this case, the government institution that is considered appropriate in its field and strategic location is the Ministry of National Education (Depdiknas). Donated not only collections, but also collection racks, hardware (servers and workstations) as well as systems including for library administration management applications (Alice). Over time, the management of the Ministry of National Education Library began to face several obstacles in the use of the Alice system. First, the limitations in adding new features. Among other things: serial management needs, online catalog on the web and report customization which needs change frequently. Additional features if you have to request an official module from the Alice developer, it means that it requires additional funds that are not small. Moreover, there is no official distributor in Indonesia, so you have to expect support from the UK. Plus some requirements that require expensive infrastructure such as a dedicated public IP in order to get Alice online on the web. At that time, to address some of the needs (mainly report customization), it was done by trying to directly access the database stored in DBase format. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't because the data structure is proprietary and complex and the number of records is large. To learn the structure of the database, try to contact via email to developer Alice. But no response at all. Here comes the second problem. It's hard to delve deeper into how Alice's software works. Because Alice is a proprietary system that is completely closed, everything is very vendor dependent. It takes some money to get an official service for customization. One of the main functions of the Ministry of National Education Library is to coordinate the library management of work units under the Ministry of National Education. In its implementation, there is often a need to be able to distribute library system software to these various work units. Here comes the third problem: it is difficult (or impossible) to redistribution of Alice's systems. Alice is software that does not allow the Ministry of National Education to freely redistribute it under a license. Everything has to be licensed and costs money. November 2006, the library was faced with a fundamental problem. Alice's system was suddenly unusable. It turns out that the Alice that has been used so far is implemented with a rental system. No wonder the cost is relatively cheap. Each year the user has to pay back to extend the lease term. But what is worrying is the fact that libraries have to store all important and critical information in a system that they never had. If you forget or don't want to pay rent again, you will lose access to your own data. Very ridiculous. It would be tantamount to suicide if you were still dependent on such a licensed system. Finally, the Ministry of National Education Library manager reviewed the use of the Alice system in the Ministry of National Education library. Some of the important points include:

• Alice is reliable (reliable), but has many limitations. The rental fee is relatively cheap, but if you need additional support, whether simple or complex, it really depends on the Alice developer based in England. It costs money which in total is also not cheap.

• The proprietary license model used by Alice's developer does not match the conditions of most libraries in Indonesia. Even though the manager of the Ministry of National Education Library, as the coordinator of many libraries within the Ministry of National Education, has an interest in being able to freely do many things with the software used.

• Storing important and critical data for library operations in proprietary software and using a rental system, is considered something ridiculous and threatens the independence and sustainability of the library itself.

• Alice runs on the Windows operating system which is also proprietary, even though the manager of the Ministry of National Education Library wants to switch to using open source operating systems (such as GNU/Linux and FreeBSD).

• The problem of wasted foreign exchange to pay for software that does not meet needs.


Information


Web Online Public Access Catalogue - Use the search options to find documents quickly