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System Design for Library Management

Last Updated : 17 Jul, 2024

Designing a library management system involves creating a comprehensive

solution to manage and automate various library operations. A well-designed
library management system not only enhances operational efficiency but also
improves the user experience for both library staff and students. In this article,
we will explore the fundamental aspects of system design for a library
management system, covering essential features, architecture considerations,
and best practices to ensure a scalable, and user-friendly solution.

Library Management System Design

Important Topics for System Design of Library Management

Requirements for Library Management System Design
Use Case Diagram for Library Management System Design
Capacity Estimation for Library Management System Design
High-Level Design for Library Management System Design
Low-Level Design for Library Management System Design
Database Design for Library Management System Design:
Microservices used in System Design for Library Management
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Requirements for Library Management System Design

1. Functional Requirements

Books Management:
Store information about each book (e.g., title, author, genre,
publication date).
Track availability (e.g., number of copies available, current status).
Categorize books into genres or categories for easy classification.
Allow the librarian to add and remove new members.
User Management:
Allow users to create and register accounts.
Maintain user profiles with personal information
Circulation Management:
Borrowing: Issue books to users, recording the date and due date
Returns: Process book returns and update the inventory.
Renewals: Allow users to renew borrowed books.
Fine and Fee Management:
The system should notify the user and librarian about the overdue
books.
There should be a maximum limit on taking a book by any
members.
There should also be a limit on how many days a member can keep
a book.
The system should be able to collect fines for books returned after
the due date.
Reporting and Analytics:
Usage Reports: Generate reports on library usage, popular books,
borrowing trends, and overdue items.
Inventory Reports: Create reports on current inventory, missing
books, and damaged items.

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Performance:
Response time should be fast for search queries, catalog updates,
and user transactions.
Throughput: System should handle a large number of transactions
per seconds, without performance degradation.
Scalability:
Horizontal Scalability: can handle increased load by adding more
servers.
Vertical Scalability: the system should support vertical scaling by
upgrading existing server resources(e.g. CPU, Memory).
Availability:
Ensure that the system is available all the time, with minimal
downtime for maintenance and updates.
Implement failover mechanisms to maintain service continuity in
case of server failures.
Reliability:
Data Integrity: ensure the accuracy and consistency of data,
particularly for transactions involving book borrowing and
returning.
Error Handling: Implement robust error handling to manage and
log errors gracefully without affecting the user experience.

Use Case Diagram for Library Management System Design

Actors in our System

Member user: Those who can search a book, issue a book, return and
renewal of borrowed book.
Librarian: responsible for adding, updating, and removing of books.
System: responsible for sending notifications for overdue books, and
calculate fine.

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Use Case Diagram for Library Management System Design

Capacity Estimation for Library Management System Design

Capacity estimation for a Library Management System (LMS) involves
determining the necessary resources to handle expected user loads and data
volumes efficiently. The goal is to ensure that the system performs well under
peak load conditions and can scale as needed.

Concurrent Users: Estimate the maximum number of users who can access
the system at the same time.
Concurrent Users: 1000
This is based on the assumption that up to 1000 users (library staff
and patrons) might be using the system simultaneously for
searching, borrowing, returning books, etc.
Transactions per Second (TPS): Estimate the number of transactions the
system can handle per second.
Transactions per Second (TPS): 10
Given 1000 daily transactions spread over 10 hours of operation,
the peak TPS is around 10 transaction per second.
Data Storage: Estimate the amount of data storage needed to store the
number of books, users, transactions, etc.
Books Data Storage
Number of Books: 1,000
Size per Book: 720 bytes
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Total Storage for Books: 1,000×720 bytes = 720,000 bytes

= 720 KB
Members Data Storage
Number of Members: 5000
Size per Member: 250 bytes
Total Storage for Members: 5000×250 bytes =
12,50,000 bytes = 1250 KB
Transactions Data Storage
Number of Transactions per Year: 100 transactions/day ×
365 days/year = 36,500 transactions
Size per Transaction: 80 bytes
Total Storage for Transactions: 36,500×80 bytes =
29,20,000 bytes = 2920 KB
Total Data Storage
Books: 720 KB
Members: 25 KB
Transactions: 292 KB
Total: 720 KB + 25 KB + 292 KB = 1,037 KB ≈ 1 MB
Network Bandwidth: Assess the required bandwidth to support data
transfer and user interactions without latency.
Daily Data Transfer
Assuming each read/write operation involves 1 KB of data
Daily Transactions: 100
Daily Reads (searches, views, etc.): 1000
Total Daily Data Transfer: (100+1000) × 1 KB = 1100 KB

High-Level Design for Library Management System Design

In this image below the main component of a Library Management System is
shown with the interaction with each other:

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High-Level Design for Library Management System Design

Designing a library management system involves multiple components

working together to handle book cataloging, member management, borrowing
and returning books, inventory tracking, and more. Here's a high-level design
that outlines the primary components and their interactions:

1. User Interface (UI) Layer

This layer is responsible for interacting with the end-users of the system. It
includes:

Web Application: An interface for library staff and patrons to manage

books, members, and transactions. Built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a
front-end framework like React, Angular, or Vue.js.
Mobile Application: A mobile-friendly interface for accessing library
services on the go. Built using native or cross-platform frameworks like
Flutter or React Native.

2. Application Layer

This layer contains the core business logic of the system and is responsible for
processing requests from the UI layer.

Controller Services: Handle incoming requests, process them, and send

responses back to the UI layer. Implemented using a framework like Spring
Bootto(Java),
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Business Logic Services: Implement the core functionalities such as book

management, catalog management, transaction processing, and reporting.

3. Data Layer

This layer is responsible for data storage, retrieval, and management.

Database Management System (DBMS): Stores all the data related to

books, members, and transactions.
Data Access Layer (DAL): Manages database interactions. Implements
CRUD operations and complex queries using Object-Relational Mapping
(ORM) frameworks like Hibernate (Java), Sequelize (Node.js), or
SQLAlchemy (Python).

4. Integration Layer

This layer handles communication with external systems and services.

External APIs: Integration with external services like payment gateways (for
fines), external book databases (for book information), and email/SMS
services (for notifications).
Middleware: Facilitates communication between different components and
services, ensuring data consistency and security. Implemented using
message brokers like RabbitMQ or Kafka.

5. Scalability and Performance Layer

This layer ensures the system can handle growth and high performance.

Load Balancing: Distributes incoming requests across multiple servers to

ensure no single server is overwhelmed. Implemented using tools like
NGINX, HAProxy, or cloud-based load balancers.
Caching: Improves performance by caching frequently accessed data using
tools like Redis or Memcached.
Auto-Scaling: Automatically adjusts the number of servers based on the
current load using cloud services like AWS Auto Scaling or Google Cloud's
auto-scaling
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Low-Level Design for Library Management System Design

It provides detailed information on the components and their interactions.

Modules

User Management
Catalog management
Transaction Management
Notification

This includes:

Class diagram: showing classes , their attributes, methods, and

relationships.
Sequence diagram: illustrating the interactions between objects for specific
for use cases.
Algorithm and pseudo Code: important algorithms or workflows, a
pseudocode or flowcharts.
State Diagrams

1. Class diagram

Here we give an example of class diagram that helps in visualizing that how
we can see the interactions between the classes and how they are link
together.

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diagram for Library Management System Design

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2. Sequence Diagram

To show how they communicate with each other in a sequence.

Sequence Diagram of System Design for Library Management

3. Low-Level Design Diagram

Below is the low-level design diagram for the Library management system:

Low-Level Design Diagram for Library Management System Design

Database Design for Library Management System Design:

First create an ER diagram for creating the database design. ERD helps in
giving a visual representation of the data entities and their relationships
within the system.
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Then Normalization is the second step in which data is organized in a way in

database to reduce the redundancy and improve data integrity.
Steps includes:
Step 1: Identify functional dependencies
Step 2: Apply Normalization rules to make it simple from complex
ones
Step 3: Create the relationships between tables after normalizing
those complex tables into simpler form.
Step 4: Eliminate redundancy which helps to reduce duplication of
data For example: Course of each student kept in a separate table
rather than being duplicated in each student entry.
Then we create the database Schema which gives a structure of the
database, including tables, columns, data types, and constraints.
Designing a database for library management system is efficient, scalable,
and easy to maintain.
Define all the required tables based on the entities you identified in
ERD and in the normalized data.
Define columns for each table, that represents the attribute of that
entity , also the datatypes and constraint (e.g., primary key , foreign
key, unique constraints).
Establish Relationships : Use foreign key to establish relationships
between tables.
Indexing: use indexing for columns to make searching easy while
executing queries.

These are the tables we create while creating out database schemas of
Library Management System.

1. Table for Authors of the book

Helps to find a book by Authors and reduce redundancy or duplicacy that can
occur if we keep that as a column in a book table

CREATE TABLE Authors (

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FirstName VARCHAR(50),
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LastName VARCHAR(50)
);

2. Table for Publishers of the book

This helps to find a book by any particular publisher

CREATE TABLE Publishers (

PublisherID INT PRIMARY KEY,
Name VARCHAR(100),
Address VARCHAR(255),
Phone VARCHAR(20),
Email VARCHAR(100)
);

3. Table for Books

this helps to find the book easily

CREATE TABLE Books (

BookID INT PRIMARY KEY ,
Title VARCHAR(255),
AuthorID INT,
PublisherID INT,
ISBN VARCHAR(20),
PublicationYear INT,
Bookcategory VARCHAR(20),
FOREIGN KEY (AuthorID) REFERENCES Authors(AuthorID),
FOREIGN KEY (PublisherID) REFERENCES Publishers(PublisherID)
);

4. Table for Members of the Library

CREATE TABLE Members (

MemberID INT PRIMARY KEY,
FirstName VARCHAR(50),
LastName VARCHAR(50),
Address VARCHAR(255),
Phone VARCHAR(20),|
Email VARCHAR(100),
MembershipDate
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5. Member table

MemberID Int

FirstName VARCHAR(50)

LAstName VARCHAR(50)

Address VARCHAR(255)

Phone INT

Email VARCHAR(100)

MenbershipDate Date

6. Table for transaction

CREATE TABLE transaction (

TransactionID INT PRIMARY KEY ,
BookID INT,
MemberID INT,
TransactionDate DATE,
DueDate DATE,
ReturnDate DATE,
FOREIGN KEY (BookID) REFERENCES Books(BookID),
FOREIGN KEY (MemberID) REFERENCES Members(MemberID
);

7. Table for The Librarian.

CREATE TABLE Librarian (

LibrarianID INT PRIMARY KEY,
FirstName
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Phone VARCHAR(20)
);

8. Table for Book Categories

It will make easier to separate books by categories like Comic , Education,

General knowledge, Records, History, Stories, Novel Section.

CREATE TABLE BookCategories (

BookID INT,
CategoryID INT,
PRIMARY KEY (BookID, CategoryID),
FOREIGN KEY (BookID) REFERENCES Books(BookID),
FOREIGN KEY (CategoryID) REFERENCES Categories(CategoryID)
);

This is the design which covers basic functionalities of a Library Management

System in tabular form and we can make all these in a single design by linking
them with as per relationships.

Microservices used in System Design for Library

Management
Microservices is the concept of breaking down the whole system into smaller
independent services. So they can work efficient individually in the start after
integrating them together we don't have to face much of problems. The
microservices we can use in library Management System are:

1. User Service: In this all the user related functionalities are handled like
handles user registration, authentication and authorization, maintaining their
profile, their activities which includes history, issuing books , reservation of
books , Their preferences.
2. Catalog Service: It helps in managing database of books like their metadata
(e.g., when the book is added(date and time ), Category of book, when the
old version of the same book is updated, when this book is deleted from the
system...). Also provide search and browse functionalities.
3. Transaction Services : It focuses on handling book borrowing and returning
transactions.
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4. Notification Service : It manages when to send , whom to send the

notifications and also give alerts before the Due date is over,
announcements(using emails, SMS).
5. Reporting Service : it basically generate reports after analyzing like usage
statistics, transactions reports , inventory reports, and user activity logs.
6. Search Services : it includes advanced searching features like full-text
search, voice searching , filtering options as well.

Scalability for System Design of Library Management

It focuses that a system can handle maximum increased load if we add more
functionalities and resources. There are various ways to ensures scalability of a
system :

Horizontal Scalability: The microservices we used above can be

independently scales means we can scales each services according to the
time when the load is increased in a particular services or on few of them.
Vertical Scalability: Adding more resources is preferred in this (CPU, RAM)
to already existing instances.
Database Sharding : Distributing the database across multiple services to
handle large volume of data.
Load Balancing: we can implement load balancers which helps to distribute
the load on multiple instances that we added, like distribute incoming
requests evenly across multiple instances. We can use techniques like
round- robin, least connections, or IP hash for effective load distributions.
Caching : use caching mechanisms to reduce database load and improve
response times for frequently accessed data, such as book catalogs or user
profiles.
Monitoring and logging: Implement comprehensive monitoring and logging
to track the health and performance of each microservice. we can use tools
like prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack for effective monitoring and analysis.

by using microservices and handling scalability, a library Management System

can become more robust, flexible and capable of handling varying loads
efficiently.
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