Searchable Library Database - How??

Hi there. I ma new here and this is my first post - I will post on the "introduce" post but need to try and find help with something before hand. I am designing a website for my church. We have a large library of books available for loan and I want to have a section similar to any online book retailer where people can search by category, author, title, etc. I have never had any experience with databases and someone is giving me the list as a Microsoft Access database file.

How do I go about incorperating that list into the web site so that it can be searched effectively in a variety of ways?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Is this website can be access by anyone, I mean, do you put this website on the internet, or just locally used (by the church members)?

If so, you can design a simple database in MS Access, where you will put all the books information such as the title, author and category.
Access for beginner

After that create an ASP/HTML page for the search function that search by catagory or title or author.
ASP Tutorial

If you are really really beginner in ASP or Access, than you better go for online tutorial on this two thing first. There is plenty of sample out there for you to learn yourself.

In fact, you can ask help in WebForumz as well from this forum [ ASP | Access ]

Hope that helps..

Thanks for that. I am completely new to ASP, but will hav a look at these tutorials. Many thanks - it is to be available to the general public.

I dont know if this is helpful, or related to your problem,
but I found a little free software for you to manage your books.

Why dont you have a look.. [ GetLibra ]

Monie, that looks absolutely fantaastic!! I didn't know such a program existed! Many many thanks - I will download it this afternoon. My only problem at this stage is that a lady in the church has spent ages going through the books with her daughter catalogueing it all in a database and might not appreciate me suggesting we redo it! But the thought of using a web-cam as a scanner and having pictures and details of the books as well as titles sounds fantastic.

Thanks for the tip!

Stuart

Yeah.. I didnt know such program exist as well.
I was surfing the net to find a Program/Software for managing my digital mp3/video/movie/books collection.

My search lead me to the page (the link I gave to you), and it reminds me of you. So I gave you the link.

Could you do me a favour?
Tell me if you successfully done it, I mean the web-cam scanning things.. Good Luck...

Thanks.

I tried the program. It turned out that it is great for keeping track of things on the pc but when uploaded it doesn't seem to upload a searchable database, but simply a photo list of books in the library. I don't think it will really work as we have about 700 books at the moment so couldn't expect folks to browse through them all to find what they need.

But, again, thanks for the recommendation - I will use it for my own records if nothing else!

And re. the web-cam scanning, I couldn't get it to work - but I don't know if this might have just been down to my web-cam's settings (the image appeared ok in the little window, but it never seemed to scan nono matter what I tried.

Thanks again

Well...
What a disappointment...

In that case, you'll have to go back to ASP and Access then...

Hi,

I gave it a go with my own DVD's and CD's.....and it is great if you want a little 'library' listing all your own items.

The webcam worked ok for me after a little adjustments.....adjust the focus for close up of the barcodes and I also found if I used more light it worked a treat.

Scott

Wow....
That's great scott!
Maybe I'll try myself too.
Thanks for the update...