--- Forwarded Message from Johnathon Beals <[log in to unmask]> ---

>Date:         Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:57:48 -0400
>From: Johnathon Beals <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: #8595 barcode & catalog system for Macs
>To: [log in to unmask]

Hello Michael,

It is interesting that you ask this question. We here at Grand Valley are
just now finishing up a Mac-based Lending Library system based in FileMaker
Pro. FileMaker is a nice program, and very flexible. It works a bit
different from other desktop database programs like Microsoft Access, and
thus takes a little getting used to at first, but it is very extensible.
We've even built a "one touch" Amazon lookup for media info based on UPC,
ASIN, etc for all of the available Amazon sites (US, UK, FR, DE, JP). If you
end up going this route I'd be happy to share those scripts with you.

Barcode scanning works best (as far as I can tell) on Macs when you get a
barcode scanner that is of the "keyboard wedge" type, which means the
scanner interprets the barcode, and then enters the text just as if it were
typed in on a keyboard. WASP scanners are nice, but their tech support said
Mac compatibility is only so-so. I found a scanner that supposedly works
good, but have not as of yet had a chance to test it. That one is the Zebex
ZBA ZB8150.

We went with FileMaker specifically because it is cross-platform, so we
wouldn't be tied into Mac or PC platforms, and has a very easy web
publishing engine to put your databases online so faculty can search the
available resources. Depending on what you want to do with it it could cost
anywhere from a couple hundred for a basic one-seat package, or
between $2000-3000 (on the Apple Education Store) for the FileMaker Server
Advanced (which is what lets you publish the data to the web) and some seats
of the client. You can download trial versions of the server and client to
test-drive them as well. There is a Lending Library template that we worked
from in the trial version as well, so much of the work was already done for
us, we just needed to tweak it.

--
John Beals
Assistant Director, LRC
Grand Valley State University
[log in to unmask]



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