ABSTRACT
Reading groups have become extremely popular over the past years. And because of their successes in so many communities throughout the nation, the researcher want to implement an online book club management system, to enable students and other book lovers enjoy reading and can easily find a reading group close to their community.
The system which will be implemented on the internet and can be accessed on any operating device, either desktop or mobile devices connected to the internet. The system communicates with the database residing on a remote server. This system has been built with HTML, CSS and PHP.
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION
People who read at least seven books a year are reported to be 2.3 times more intelligent than people who read only one. That stat, floating around the Internet, has been attributed jointly (and separately) to the U.S. Department of Labor and a survey by Yahoo!, Whether that information is strictly reliable or not, executives and avid readers everywhere will attest to the value of reading—for personal development, leadership purpose, training, continuous learning and company innovation. To enhance reading culture among students, starting a book club with books that speak to career advancement and fulfillment.
For promoting reading and developing lifelong reading habits have always been parallel goals with developing information literacy through their integrated school library programs. This has traditionally included developing extensive collections of quality literature books (books and novels), as well as rich information books, all in support of the school curriculum and as resources to support positive reading habits. Computerization and the pervasive infiltration of the Internet have dramatically altered all areas of work for teacher-librarians. The school library community has fully engaged in management uses of technologies: automating library collections; providing reference online; providing access to databases and electronic materials; as well as building a significant virtual presence through school library websites, archives of student work, and collected bookmarks of thematic resources. However, the traditional areas of promoting reading and providing readers’ advisory have often remained static and bound by face-to-face methods such as conducting book talks; building in-library displays; and bulletin board displays, as well as evidence that by improving students' access to reading materials and opportunities to interact with peers about their reading, teachers can do a better job of helping all readers become skillful, motivated readers. Since technology is seen as occupying more and more of students time out of school, it would seem important to explore how these two areas might unite to explore how new technologies such as e-books and e-readers support the goals of motivating students to read. Since digital technologies are so appealing to today’s youth, research seems to support the value of developing an online book club system as a factor in motivating young readers to read more with some evidence they may be particularly valuable in motivating reluctant readers. Online book club will enable e-readers also have been used in research exploring children’s reading comprehension (Larson, 2010). Evidence from this work suggests e-readers offer more than just portability and storage capacity; they support readers through their use of multiple tools and text features such as text-to-speech options, dictionaries and note-taking capabilities (Larson, 2010). There can be little doubt that e-books and e-readers are here to stay. In fact, data from publishers/distributors of e-books and the makers/marketers of e-readers have all indicated that growing sales and growing demands will lead to further innovations in these technologies and wider acceptance of their use. This information, coupled with evidence that those who own an e-reader buy more books now than before they owned an e-reader (Duncan, 2010), should awaken teacher-librarians to a reality that looms before them, one that holds great promise in our goals of supporting literacy and promoting reading habits.
1.2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this research is to develop an online book club management system, to increase the reading culture among members of this online community, to enhance the sharing of books, proper reading, review books, rate books and connect with other readers.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
1.4 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
In most educational institutions there’s a need to increase the reading culture among students especially in this internet age, were students spend a lot of time on the internet. Students can’t have access to books on holidays or easily without having to visit the school library on campus, it is not only time consuming, but it is also reduce students’ academic performance due to no access to books without stress.
1.5 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of the project is limited to several processes: handling of student ability to access academic materials without having to visit the campus, improve students’ academic performance through continuous reading with other peers. The system will generate the reports such as books read by a particular student to encourage others read same book. The online book club management system is designed in such a way that makes it possible to access through any device connect to the internet.
1.6 DEFINITION OF TERMS
Reading - The action or skill of reading.
E-readers – electronic readers.
Educational - Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits.
Online - while connected to a computer or under computer control.
Performance – an act of showing improvement or decrease in a particular period of time.
Academic - of, relating to, or associated with an academy or school especially of higher learning
