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A useful concept and nicely packaged. When available with interfaces to other systems may well be a useful tool to allow different systems to be compared consistently.

Contents

Bibliostat, Bibliostat Connect, Conclusions, Requirements

Management Dynamics is a start-up by Paul Sybrowsky - one of the Dynix founders.  The target area for their two products Bibliostat and Bibliostat Connect is management information. Bibliostat is a tool aimed at the librarian wanting to dissect and analyse his or her own operations more intently - the micro view.  Bibliostat Connect is a more innovative product in that it aims to allow a librarian to see their service in relation to other similar systems. Aimed at Public Libraries.

Bibliostat Connect

Potentially a very useful addition to the management of libraries. Less useful outside the USA, although may be if European libraries want to compare their performance to similar libraries in the USA.

Bibliostat

Bibliostat is designed as an add-on to your LMS (Library Management System) - currently working with Dynix only but other systems are planned. Horizon is next on the list with a target date of March 1^st.  The basic mechanism is one of extracting the whole of the relevant data files from the LMS (Library Management System) and then manipulating them locally rather than on the host system where complex analyses can create an unacceptable load. Subsequent data loads just take the changes to the files to reduce the amount of time taken for regular refreshing of the data.

Getting data from a PICK data structure can be tricky and Bibliostat uses DataStage from UniVerse to extract the circulation files from Dynix and load them into an SQL compliant database - SQL Anywhere or Sybase. Once loaded onto the system, there are 16 fundamental report types that can display the data in any number of graphical ways.  Cross tabulating of data in complex ways not possible on the standard Dynix system can be achieved. The report data can also be exported to Excel and other SQL compliant desktop tools.

Reports can be generated and saved on a simple menu system for easy running by non-technical management staff.

Contact

Paul Sybrowsky
Management Dynamics
175, North Freedom Blvd
Suite 108
Provo
Utah 84601
tel: +1-801-371-9222
fax:+1-801-371-0644
www.bibliostat.com

Requirements

Bibliostat: min. client

• Pentium 166 MHz
• 200 MB hard drive
• 32 MB RAM
• CD-ROM
• Windows 95
• MS Office 97

Bibliostat Connect

• 486 DX2 66 MHz
• 16 MB RAM
• CD-ROM
• Windows 95

Bibliostat Connect

Bibliostat Connect is the Macro view of the library management statistics - allowing cross comparisons with other systems.  Together with the Bibliostat Connect software is a database of library statistics from the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

These statistics have to be generated and submitted by each library to the Center. By comparing your own statistics to those for similar libraries, you can gain valuable insight into relative performance of your library. Selecting of comparative libraries can be done by a variety of criteria e.g. population, numbers of books, circulation transactions, etc.  Once selected, your library’s statistics can be viewed in relation to those others that you have selected.  Special statistical analyses are used for the data comparisons - this is not an area where basic mathematics is applicable.

The innovative step taken by Management Dynamics is to allow libraries to contribute their own data to NCES via the Web thereby short-circuiting the data collection procedures and making faster cross comparisons possible.

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