Library Management System

Introduction

This application is developed to simulate a basic library management system. It enables both users and librarians to interact with a digital library environment through the command line.

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🎯 Objectives

• Enable new users to register and login to the library system.
• Allow users to browse books, borrow them, and return them.
• Provide librarians the ability to manage book inventory and user access.
• Support searching books and checking their availability.
• Maintain a record of all users, librarians, and books in the system.

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Project Tasks

1. Forked the repository and cloned it locally. Created a new branch before development.
2. Completed and implemented core classes:
   • Book – Book details and accessors
   • User – Library members with credentials and borrowed books
   • Librarian – Admin role with management privileges
   • Library – Central system managing all entities
3. Implemented the interactive CLI using the Main class:
   • Users can register, login, logout, borrow, and return books.
   • Librarians can login, logout, add/remove books and manage users.
4. Enforced username uniqueness and password-based authentication.
5. Maintained collections of all books, users, and librarians with in-memory data structures.
6. Used Git for version control:
   • Committed changes incrementally with meaningful messages.
   • Merged feature branch into develop.
   • Pushed all changes to the GitHub fork.

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System Overview

Class Structure

Class	Description
Book	Represents a book with title, author, year, and ISBN.
User	Handles user login data and manages borrowed books.
Librarian	Stores librarian credentials.
Library	Core class that maintains collections of books, users, and librarians, and provides all main operations.
Main	CLI interface, handles interaction logic between user and system.

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Functionalities

User Operations

• Register or login
• Borrow books
• Return books
• View available books
• Logout

Librarian Operations

• Login and authentication
• Add new books or increase quantity
• Remove books or decrease quantity
• Add/remove users and librarians
• Logout

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Sample Code Snippet

if (!library.doesBookExist(name, author, year, isbn)) {
    System.err.println("This book doesn't exist!");
} else {
    library.removeBook(name, author, year, isbn);
}

This code checks if a book exists in the library before removing a copy from the system.

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Evaluation

• ✔️ Code compiles and executes without errors.
• ✔️ Object-Oriented Programming principles are applied properly.
• ✔️ Good use of encapsulation and access modifiers.
• ✔️ Code is clean, readable, and well-commented.
• ✔️ Git is used for version control with structured commits and proper branching.

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🚀 Future Improvements

• Integrate persistent storage using a database or file system.
• Develop a GUI using JavaFX or Swing.
• Implement user roles and permissions more securely.
• Track book due dates and overdue fines.

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