User registration system for Bweyogerere Secondary School Library

Abstract

The study aimed at designing a user registration system for Bweyogerere Secondary School that can help to register users at all times. The objectives that guided the project study were to: identify the services provided by Bweyogerere Secondary School Library, examine the current registration system for Bweyogerere Secondary School Library, examine the existing challenges of the current registration system at Bweyogerere Secondary School Library and design an online library registration system for Bweyogerere Secondary School library users to address the identified challenges above. The study used a case study research design while adopting quantitative research approach and the researcher was working with a population of 760 respondents. The sample size composed of 40 students and 2 librarians. Data collection methods included: questionnaire and document review. Data was analyzed and presented using the different data presentation methods that enabled the researcher to eliminate any erroneous data, ethical considerations which include informed consent, confidentiality and openness. Major findings were: students register manually with the library and the challenges they face during the registration process which include tiresome, making long queues and time consuming. The findings further revealed that the current registration system used at Bweyogerere Secondary School Library is paper based which causes information overload of the circulation desk and also insecure because it accommodates torn paper which may lead to loss of library user data in case of a disaster. From the findings above, the study concludes that Bweyogerere Secondary School library wastes a lot of time in registering users and sometimes losing the user details. The study therefore recommends to management of Bweyogerere Secondary School to adopt the proposed online library registration system because it does not require a lot of money to operate and the library staff should be trained on how to use the system to be able to meet the needs of the users. Further, the study recommends that, for the proposed system to effectively serve Bweyogerere Secondary School community, users should provide correct information about themselves for the library staff to print out the lists of registered library users and to be contacted in case of an emergency. Additionally, the researcher recommends that the library staff should be trained on how to use the proposed system to avoid debugging during the registration process.