App Developers Club creates online goldenrod

Fueled by last year’s release of the SHS app, which allowed students easy access to the school websites from their phones, the SHS Application Developers’ Club is working on an online goldenrod system. 

The program would be a more effective way to screen damaged textbooks and novels. 

The project was initially started by previous seniors Kabir Chandrasekher and Matt Yee. After two years of work, the project was handed down to current junior, Aditya Agrawal. 

Yee and Chandrasekhar, now graduated, were pivotal in the initial design and concept of the online goldenrod form. According to Aggrawal, they provided detailed plans for the program and all Aggrawal had to do was execute. 

Aggrawal said that the system is user-friendly and the goldenrod takes only minutes to fill out.

In order to check out a book, a student would need to set up an account on the goldenrod website. By simply entering his or her ID and username, the student will become a user in the school’s system and can then proceed to check out his or her textbooks. 

To compensate for the signature fields that are commonly found on the yellow hard copy forms, Aggrawal created a “Terms and Agreement” that lists the rules the users would have to follow.

According to Aggrawal, the club is getting help from principal Paul Robinson and librarian Kevin Heyman to add student information to the database. The main roadblock in this process has been figuring out a proper way of protecting the sensitive data such as ID number, age and date of birth. 

According to Aggrawal, the student data is important since it allows the administration to track lost books, new damage reports and the owners of the textbooks. 

The club has been focused on creating this system for teachers to enter their student lists. Once the database is complete, it should make it easier for both students and teachers to keep track of their library books.

According to Heyman, the Golden-rod system is a great step forward since it saves paper and makes the textbook checkout process more convenient. There are legal barriers that in Heyman’s eyes will be resolved at the start of second semester and will allow for the actual system to be in place early 2014.