Free Library Management for Vocational Schools

K-12 systems are optimized for 15,000+ titles, fiction collections, reading-level metadata, and parent portals. A vocational library has 400-2,000 items, almost no fiction, and needs trade-pillar tagging plus SDS circulation. OpenEduCat lets you turn off the K-12 noise (reading levels, fiction genres, parent-portal blocks) and surface only what a trade librarian actually uses — circulation, trade tags, and SDS tracking.

Both work. OpenEduCat supports MARC 21 fields for libraries that want ALA-aligned records, but a small polytechnic with no full-time librarian can skip MARC entirely and catalog by title + trade + tags + donor in under a minute per item. Most vocational libraries we see start tag-only and migrate to MARC for the few items that need it (state-board reference texts, accreditation evidence).

Yes. Every resource record has a type field — book, manual, SDS, drawing, video, sample — and circulation rules can vary by type. SDS records can be flagged 'reference only, no checkout' so they stay on the workshop wall but still appear in the searchable catalog. This is how most factory-act and OSHA-aligned audits expect SDS access to be documented.

Yes — the UI and catalog metadata both translate. A Tamil-speaking electrical apprentice can search 'kambi alavu' (wire gauge) and find the Tamil-translated NEC summary; a Spanish-speaking HVAC student in Texas can browse the catalog entirely in Spanish. Vernacular instruction is a stated goal of India's NSDC trade-library guidelines and a measurable equity factor under Perkins V.

They are, and they should stay separate. Workshop inventory (consumables, tools, machine spares) belongs in OpenEduCat's inventory module — it has different lifecycle rules (calibration, depreciation, restock). The library module tracks the documents about those tools — the manual, the SDS, the maintenance log template. Both modules share the same database, so a manual and its corresponding lathe can cross-reference, but they don't get mashed into one catalog.

Software cost is zero (LGPLv3, self-hosted). Hosting runs on a $5-10/month VPS for a school under 500 students. The only real cost is the staff time to catalog the existing collection — and our migration helpers (CSV import, ISBN auto-lookup for the books that have one, bulk-tag UI) cut that from weeks to days. For NSDC-aligned ITIs and Perkins V-funded CTE programs, this typically falls inside the existing IT line item.