LearningAccess ReCon

The LearningAccess ReCon tool is specifically developed to assist small libraries of any type in automating their collection, and does need to create electronic records of their holdings. This process, most commonly referred to as Retrospective Conversion, can be an expensive step, costing anywhere from $25,000 or more for a typical small library collection of 15,000 items when using any of the commercial services available.

One of the most daunting challenges to automation and state-of-the-art digital access in small libraries has been this difficult and expensive process of building the initial library catalog. The LearningAccess ReCon toolset changes all of this and makes it possible to use library staff and community volunteers to build a high quality, fully standards-based catalog rapidly and painlessly.

Through a unique process, library material is handled only once, where it is given a barcode, spine labeled (if needed) and fully cataloged using MARC21. This is made possible by a very flexible and easy to use web based toolset, a local MARC21 master copy-cataloging database, and an optional remote z39.50-based cataloging facility.

The LearningAccess ReCon tools provide a proven solution in use by a number of small libraries in the past 4 years. The new version 3.0 of the toolset offers the added ability to build catalogs which are shared by different library locations, while providing for innovative automatic data reconciliation.

Technical Specifications and Requirements

The LearningAccess ReCon server requires RedHat ES 4.0 on an Intel X86 platform, or MAC OS X 10.3 or better.

Server hardware supported ranges from single processor to multi processor and RAID Array capable Intel X86 systems, and from the Apple MAC Mini to the XServer/Xsan system on the Apple Macintosh platform. The hardware needed depends on the number of simultaneous users and size of collection to be converted.

The LearningAccess ReCon tool requires no special client software, and can be accessed with most modern Web browsers. The Preferred browsers are: FireFox 1.0 or later, Mozilla 1.0 or later, Internet Explorer 6.0 or later, and Safari 1.0 or later. For reporting and printing of spine labels, at least one PC with Office 2000 or later is required. Further each workstation using the LearningAccess ReCon tool requires a barcode reader.

Data produced The end result of the ReCon process are a MARC21 Bibliographic datafiel and a MARC21 Holdings datafile, which then can be imported into the LearningAccess ILS system. (It is possible to produce data which comforms with other lirbary automation systems, for more details on this please contact us.