Bryn Music Library App

App is successful in First Semester of Use

As we move towards making the piano lab a multi-use room, specifically centered around music technology, I made one of the first steps: Moving the keyboard music library into the lab and beginning to organize the music. We were given a scholarship to have a student work in the library, beginning to organize and catalog the keyboard music.

However, to begin, I needed a music librarian software package. I did a lot of research and discovered that there were only a couple library packages targeted at music specifically and both were either not updated in a long time or never completely launched as viable software. I looked at general library software which were either too complex for what we need, or too expensive for our small library.

So I wrote my own web-based library system which I call the “Bryn Librarian”. It is specifically targeted to accomplish what we need for our music library, as well as the orchestra, vocal, and jazz libraries at SCF.

This package is web-based, uses the PHP, MYSQL, and JAVASCRIPT languages, as well as jQuery, jQuery Mobile, and jQuery UI. The package is device independent, cross-browser compliant, and works well on mobile as well as desktop devices.

The features include auto-complete, the ability to search by any criteria, searchable tags to categorize music, Checks for duplicate composers and titles, user and permission management, ability to track whether items are checked out and by whom, printing of information related to any item,

We have already catalogued about half of the music that had been in storage in building 9A and the app has been in use all semester, allowing me to sort out a few bugs.