Dear Library professional In our Siddaganga Institute of Technology (SIT), Tumkur Library, we were facing a challenge of tracking the Visitors to the library. The challenges were 1. The majority of the visitors to the library usually visit the Reference section. Hence these visitors do not visit stacks and get books issued from there. Though we have a good strength of such visitors we do not have statistics of them. For example: Which department students utilize the library facilities? 1. Since every visitor to the library is expected to fill in a register, it is a painful activity for the users to enter the details in the register. This problem becomes worse during the peak hours for example during recess time. 1. When the students are leaving the library, the security at the library needs to cross check the Issue slip against the books being carried by the student 1. Lastly the security personnel also wanted a register for non-library material being carried by the students into the library. So that when the students are leaving the library these belongings can be crossed checked with the register. But maintaining a register will be a time taking process. These were challenges faced not only by our library but also other such libraries in Tumkur (Tumkur is a District located 70 Kms away from Bangalore). Hence we, the NewGenLib(NGL) Open Source Community in Tumkur requested the NGL Development Team to develop a Visitor tracking module in the NGL software. This was developed for our community of libraries. NGL team has released a new tool called NGL Counter. The following are the features of NGL counter. 1. Simple functionality and User friendly. Little or no training required to use it. Our security personnel got easily accustomed to the new application. 1. Rapid Visitor-In and Visitor-out functions to handle large numbers during peak visitor timings. Our students are very happy because security person scans their id card and sends them in. Average 1 sec per transaction. 1. Functionality to record personal belongings and non-library material at the time of Visitor-In. No necessity to maintain register. 1. Visitor-out functionality displays the list of library books that were checked out by the Visitor from Circulation desk. Issue slips are no more required. 5. We now have complete statistics of all the users visiting to the library We are very happy with this facility. This is not only helped our library but the NGL community of libraries in Tumkur. This facility may be required for other libraries also, please make use of the open source facility. with regards T A Mohan Librarian Siddaganga Institute of Technology TUMKUR E-mail: mohan@sit.ac.in tamohanta@gmail.com Phone: 0816 2214078 Mobile:9343525141 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.