SMS Alert module sends SMS notifications to library members in the following cases.
SMS Message template can be customized
“ After installing SLIM software, the SMS system has been implemented in our library since 2012. This is an additional benefit to the borrower students to recall the date of issue, date of return, overdue (fine) which confirms the transaction made in the library. Thus confusion about the issue or return of books is not there in the minds of students as there is a written message. Students are having satisfaction with SMS systems as they can avoid economic losses on overdue /fine as getting weekly messages. Interest in library use is being increased among the students community due to SMS facility.”
SLIM Usage Statistics (Stats)
Stats module lets you produce numerous statistical reports based on transactions at the circulation desk to help you understand usage of the library collection. Some of them are,
Statistics are presented in the form of charts (bar, line, pie etc.) or data sheets for final submission to the Managing committee.
SLIM SelfIR Station
Quick check out transactions with zero or minimal staff intervention is the need of the hour. SLIM SelfIR station is the most cost-effective solution to achieve this. AND members love it!
How does SelfIR work?
User Authentication options are Username/Password, Barcode, Smartcard, Biometrics etc.
The look and feel of the SelfIR Station is customizable via various one time settings to enable display of messages and images as preferred by the library.
SLIM NewsClip Publishing
News Clippings module helps the library staff to catalogue news items about the library or its parent organization or about any other topic of interest.
Through this module, articles are scanned using a Scanner, & indexed using minimum fields like Author, Title, Source, Date, Subject, etc. Instead of a scanned image, a downloaded file can be indexed & attached using the same task icon. Keywords can be associated with News Items.
Once NEWS is published, it can be viewed by Library Users through OPAC News Bulletins.
SLIM Online Member Registration
This application helps minimize library staff efforts at the time of registering a new member. The application provides a Registration Form easily accessible to a person/student who wants to become a library member. He/She fills personal information using this online Form and submits details to the Library. The library staff, after verification, generates Member Records using the information filled by the prospective member.
“ We are using an online membership registration module, which is working well in our library. Students register themselves filling their details. After filling the form, they get a form number. Using the form number, library staff retrieve the form in SLIM software, verify details and assign Borrower ID. At the end of the day we take color printouts of all the library cards, stamp, sign and distribute them. In 1- 2 days maximum students will get the library card and start using library services, which was not possible earlier. Now with this module our work is reduced. Data is saved in the software of only those students, who have taken library cards. In our college we have 8000+ students and earlier we were printing 8000 cards which was just a waste of stationery and money. With less staff we are managing well with the help of SLIM software. This software is excellent. Software provides all the alternate solutions whatever we need. This year our membership increased to 2500+ active members”
SLIM Inventory Assistant (IA21)
Inventory control is one of the challenges faced by most libraries. Conventional methods for stock taking lead to library closure for days and finding a missing book is serendipity!
IA21 device, which is a unique combination of mobile computer with an inbuilt barcode scanner and a powerful software application, proves a valuable aid for library inventory and shelf management.
Stock taking: IA21 scans barcode labels of the books which are on shelf and verifies the scanned item against a preloaded list of expected items on shelf. It indicates wrongly shelved items, issued items found on shelf etc. The list of scanned items is submitted to SLIM software for marking inventory status OKAY.
Searching for specific items: You can load accession numbers for missing books. IA21 gives indication when a missing book is scanned. Similarly books that are to be searched in the library for any other purpose can be found using IA21.
Shelving order: The expected order of books on a shelf can be loaded in IA21. A beep is generated when a book which is not part of that shelf or is in a wrong position is scanned, indicating a wrongly shelved item.
Shelving Checked-In items: Set of books returned to the library are scanned into a list and then sorted in shelving order for quick shelving.
Mobile computer specifications:
SLIM Federated Search
Today libraries acquire multiple e-resources for the benefits of members, but many library members find it difficult to search for these resources as they have to work with a variety of User Interfaces. This results in non-utilization of valuable resources whether the access is fee based or free.
SLIM federated search allows readers to use the library OPAC as a single gateway to access multiple e-resources including institutional repositories and popular search sites.
You enter search criteria using the familiar library OPAC interface. Along with your library database, you can select other resources to search. SLIM federated search engines will fetch results from other resources and show the result in the familiar OPAC result page.
SLIM Digital Library Management (dCOLL)
dCOLL helps in managing an Institutional Repository of born digital as well as digitized material such as Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD), question banks, e-tutors, photos, white papers, archives, audio visuals, research publications of the institute.
The digital collection remains an integral part of SLIM database as opposed to third party solutions for the digital collection and enables you to acquire, describe, circulate and maintain both print and digital collections in a single application. The benefits of this strategy are as follows:
Salient Features of dCOLL:
SLIM Library Visitors Register and Statistics (LIBVizLog)
Libraries need visitors’ data to manage library infrastructure effectively.
Traditionally this is attempted by maintaining a register at the library entrance for library members to write their name and entry time, but deriving information out of this manual register is a mammoth task.
The LibVizLog module plays a vital role in collecting library visitors’ data. It analyses the data and generates statistical reports on traffic in the library.
Following are the salient features:
SLIM Current Awareness Service (CAS)
SLIM helps in the publication of an information bulletin containing particulars of the latest additions of books or articles. The list in the bulletin is arranged in the order of subjects. The particulars of the items can include abstracts besides the standard bibliographic data and library call numbers. The Keyword index or the author name index, or both these indices can get appended to this report.
The Current Awareness Service report can be prepared either in the Rich Text Format or the HTML Format. The report when created in the HTML format gets automatically linked to the Web Aware OPAC module of SLIM. Fonts, sizes, colours, elements of bibliography and their sequence are defined by users and are placed in a persistent form. With the RTF format output, it is possible to further enhance the publication using word processors, if required.
Such a CAS bulletin can be published in print format, or as an HTML page on the web site of the library, or can be sent as email messages to all, or any selected members receiving this service.
SLIM Selective Dissemination Service (SDI)
SLIM users can ,either from the web interface or through the librarian, record their preferred subjects and change their preferences any time. The library wanting to provide this service periodically produces subject wise reports (similar to CAS service above) covering the recently acquired material. These reports can be in HTML or RTF formats as usual. The format and the layout of such reports can be specified by the library.
The SDI report can be published in print format, or as an HTML page on the web site of the library, or can be sent as email messages to all, or any selected members receiving the SDI service.
In addition to basic modules, there are advanced modules like Digital Collection Management, Library Visitors Log, and many more. For more information, see Library Advanced Solutions
