Documentation:Contents

From ReservesDirect: Open Source EReserves System

This documentation is intended for library staff who will be using the software; system administrators who will be installing the software; and developers who would like to tweak the software or contribute to development efforts. A separate help file for end-users (instructors and students) is included in the software installation (see About the "Help" file).

Table of contents

1 System requirements 1.1 Hardware 1.2 Software 1.3 Supported platforms 1.4 Supported browsers 2 Library staff handbook 3 System administrator handbook 4 Developer handbook

System requirements

Hardware

To date, ReservesDirect has run successfully on a dual Xeon system with 1GB of system memory and 500GB of storage space. Hardware requirements will, of course, vary depending upon the number of users served and the quantity of data stored.

Large MySQL databases can place significant demands both on processing resources and on system memory. We recommend at least the following:

• A 1.0GHz Pentium III processor or equivalent
• 512MB of system memory

Storage of many PDF files will quickly consume hard disk space. For a system that will serve about 25,000 to 50,000 electronic reserve documents, we recommend at least the following:

• 200GB of hard disk storage, preferably SCSI RAID 5

In order to accept documents via fax, the server should be equipped with one or more fax modems:

• External serial fax modem (http://www.hylafax.org/howto/install.html) compatible with Hylafax

Software

ReservesDirect requires the following software:

• PHP 5.x +
• MySQL 4.x +

In order to ingest faxes, the following are required:

• Hylafax fax processing server
• Fax2PDF
• GNU Ghostscript

Supported platforms

ReservesDirect has been developed primarily for Linux environments, but will probably also work on Windows servers that have the prerequisite software installed (unsupported). ReservesDirect has been tested on RedHat Enterprise 3 and Fedora Core 3.

Supported browsers

ReservesDirect was designed using open standards with the intention of creating a program that could be used in any modern browser. ReservesDirect is *not* supported in Netscape 4.x or IE 3. While ReservesDirect should work in just about any modern browser, we have tested and confirmed full functionality in the following:

• Firefox 1.0 (This was the main development browser and is our preferred environment.)
• Netscape 7.x
• IE 5 and above (Windows and Mac)
• Mozilla 1.4 and above
• Safari 1.0 and above

Library staff handbook

Basic concepts

Using ReservesDirect

1. Overview of tabs and their behavior
2. Registering for classes
3. Managing users
4. Managing classes
5. Adding reserves
6. Managing reserves lists
7. Managing copyright
8. Viewing statistics

System administrator handbook

Installation

1. Installation in Brief (experienced admins)
2. Installation in Detail
3. Installation FAQ

Configuration

1. Main Configuration File
2. Populate MySQL tables with localization data
3. Apache web server config
4. Authentication setup
5. Configuring the fax software
6. Integrating with your online catalog (ILS)
   1. Sirsi implementation
7. Integrating RD with courseware
   1. Blackboard integration
8. Key Based Authentication
9. Customizing interface skins
10. Workarounds

Admin tab

1. Add or Edit Departments
2. Add or Edit Libraries
3. Add or Edit Terms
4. Add or Edit News Items
5. Manage Course Feed for a Class
6. Flag Course for Copyright Review
7. Add Help Article
8. Add Help Category
9. Edit Help Category

Support

Developer handbook

Developer's Guide

• Contributing
• Definitions
• Object model
• Course Instances, Course Aliases and Courses
• Database structure and data dictionary
• Code structure and contents
• Planned features
• Development partners
• Support
• Data Feeds
• Use cases