LIBcore Library Management System

📚 Purpose

The LIBcore Library Management System is designed to streamline the way libraries manage book lending, user activity, and inventory. It replaces manual systems and spreadsheets with an interactive, multi-user networked application that makes library management easy, efficient, and scalable.

This system is particularly beneficial to libraries because:

• It supports multi-user concurrent access via a client-server architecture.
• Users (members) and staff have separate interfaces tailored to their roles.
• It maintains organized digital records of users, books, and loan history using structured text files.
• It includes logic to track late returns and automatically update resource availability.

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✨ Features

✅ Book Search

Users can view all available books in a clean tabular format with columns for ID, Title, Author, Category, and Availability.

✅ Check Book Status

Staff can see which books are currently checked out and which are in stock.

✅ Late Check

Automatically identifies books not returned by the due date and flags them as overdue.

✅ GUI Dashboard

• Built using Swing, the GUI is interactive and intuitive.
• Members can browse, borrow, and return books easily.
• Staff can manage resources, view user data, export transactions, and perform admin actions.

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🚀 Usage & Setup

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/ttran569/libcore.git
cd libcore
git checkout ttran569-patch-1

2. Project Structure

libcore/
├── src/
│   ├── client/
│   │   ├── member/          # Member GUI and client logic
│   │   │   └── MemberGUI.java, MemberClient.java
│   │   └── staff/           # Staff GUI and client logic
│   │       └── StaffGUI.java, StaffClient.java
│   ├── server/              # Server code and networking
│   │   ├── Server.java, ClientHandler.java
│   └── server/services/     # Business logic
│       └── ResourceManager.java, TransactionManager.java, UserManager.java
├── data/
│   ├── users.txt
│   ├── resources.txt
│   └── transactions.txt

3. How to Run

1. Start the server:

Run Server.java (Eclipse or CLI)

2. Run Staff or Member client on separate machines or windows:

Run StaffClient.java or MemberClient.java

Clients communicate with the server via sockets.

4. Text Files Used

• users.txt: contains all user information
• resources.txt: contains all book records
• transactions.txt: contains borrow/return history

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🧠 Code Explanation

ClientHandler.java

• Core server-side logic
• Handles login, logout, view resources, borrow, return, export transactions

ResourceManager.java

• Adds, edits, deletes, and checks availability of resources
• Updates resources.txt

TransactionManager.java

• Logs all transactions
• Exports and filters overdue books

UserManager.java

• Displays user data from users.txt

StaffGUI.java

• GUI for staff
• Options to view/add books, view users, return/borrow, export logs

MemberGUI.java

• GUI for members
• Simplified to borrow, return, and view available books

SessionManager.java

• Handles user sessions and session expiry (future-ready)

AuthenticationService.java

• Validates user login credentials from users.txt

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👥 User Roles

• STAFF: Full access to resources and logs
• MEMBER: Can only borrow/return/view books

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📌 Notes

• Uses plain .txt files instead of a DB for simplicity
• Easily expandable to JDBC / MySQL / SQLite in the future
• Fully object-oriented, modular design using Java and Swing

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📬 Contributions

This project was developed by Kartik Tripathi, Steven Le, Alejandro Fernandez and Thomas Tran. Contributions, forks, and feedback are welcome.

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📄 License

This project is for academic and educational use.