I'm searching for a computer program for a Hebrew library.

My father has a large hebrew library (+6000 title), and it's hard to
keep track where they are etc. What I'm looking is, for a computer
program that will make it easy to catalog them, and to keep them in a
database.

Since most Hebrew books do not have an ISBN (most are printed in
Israel), it would be a hard work to key in all the information. Is
there some place where I would be able to get 'at least some' of the
book's information? See this
http://www.collectorz.com/fsbook_features.php for an example how
to grab information from different sources into the database.

And of course, the program should work with Hebrew (book title,
descriptions).

Thanks

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Request for Question Clarification by aditya2k-ga on 16 Jun 2002 23:54 PDT

Without the ISBN, what would be the primary key that the software
would use?

A primary key is something unique. For employees, it can be employee
ID. For books, it is ISBN

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Clarification of Question by baruch-ga on 17 Jun 2002 00:12 PDT

Someone asked:
Without the ISBN, what would be the primary key that the software
would use?

Clarification:
Like searching the web without an ISBN, when I know some information
about the book, is that possible?

Imagine this, I have a book which I want to enter, so instead of
typing in the whole information about it, I would type ina title, and
it would search for the avialable editions etc., and I would select
the correct one.

Shalom Baruch,

In terms of managing a Hebrew library, I have found some cataloguing 
software which supports the language.  The software is designed for 
managing libraries in schools and elsewhere and comes in versions
ranging from one suitable for a primary school library to one suitable
for a national library: 
http://www.softlink.net.au/products/Alice/default.htm

Another, possibly cheaper, option would be to set up your own database
in any software that supports Hebrew.  You would need fields for
unique ID (see my comments below), title, author, publisher, year of
publication, and ideally a field for a classification code or keywords
indicating the content of the book.

For example, MS Access supports Hebrew. There is a short article on
mixing different language versions of Access and Windows at
http://www.microsoft.com/AccessDev/Articles/MatchAcc.HTM  This might
be helpful to read if your father does not use the Hebrew version of
Windows.

I run a library for a society and use Access for my catalogue.  I am
not a database programmer, but have been able to set up what I need
without any major problems.

It is possible to search the catalogue of the Israeli National Library
and have the bibliographical records you retrieve emailed to yourself
-
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/aleph1.html.  The catalogue is searchable in
Hebrew and the library web site has an explanation of how to set up
Hebrew font display.  At the moment, it seems that in order to use the
catalogue in this way, you need to set up telnet. However, web access
to the catalogue is also under construction
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/aleph3.html so it might be worth checking what
facilities it offers.  Your father could search the National Library
catalogue for the books he owns, email their records to himself, and
import them into his own database.

By the way, many libraries around the world catalogue using a record
structure called MARC. They buy in MARC records rather than type them
all in.  However, cataloguing is a problematical area in Israel!  Here
is a short paper which sets the scene:
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla66/papers/011-164e.htm

A primary key in a database is anything that is unique to one specific
record and it can be totally arbitrary.  Most libraries use the
accession number.  This is simply a number which is assigned by the
library to the book when it is brought into the collection.  If a
library has more than one copy of a book, ISBN would not be a unique
identifier.  In library my catalogue on Access have an ID field which
contains a number that is automatically increased by 1 as each new
record is created. I make this the accession number for the book and
write it in pencil inside the front cover.

Search strategy: 1. "library management software" Hebrew   2. Israel 
"National Library"  3. MARC Hebrew