An open source software based library catalogue system using soundexing retrieval and query caching

It has been a challenge to apply effective knowledge management tools in information systems for modern libraries that deliver the most up-to-date, relevant information to end users in a quick, efficient, and user-friendly manner. In this paper, the authors present the design of a library catalogue system using principally open source software. The integrated web-based library system takes client/server architecture with multiple tiers. For performance enhancement with respect to error tolerance, searching speed and scalability, techniques of soundexing retrieval and query caching were applied. With the support of an appropriately designed soundex algorithm, the catalogue system can largely increase its recall while not compromising the search precision. On the other side, the introduced query cache speeds up the system response significantly.