book library mgmnt and student credit system

Question

I just started exploring the civiCRM options for our donation based educational institution. It fits the donor managment, people management needs. However I would like to add two more functionalities, so that civiCRM becomes one stop solution for all the management necessities for our institution

1. Library management - storing list of books available, books issue/return, new arrivals data, etc

2. Student's credit system management - list of courses, papers, credit system for the students.

Do I need to code separate extensions for this? Or already available? should I use wordpress or drupal for this needs

Mostly it wont be available... In that case, I am planning to introduce new components for library system, define relationships, etc. my guess, it should be possible. Just that I want all database into one system

Answer 1

In terms of Library functionality, not suggesting civicrm couldn't be bent do what you want (I will answer re school stuff separately) but you might want to look at http://www.koha.org/ which is open source library system that some other kiwis made

Answer 2

For schools we have provided solutions that are primarily built using custom Activity Types and custom Fields. In our case Attendance is recorded on a weekly basis, so an Activity for each Student is created each week, the teachers then record am/pm attendance via a Custom 'edit in place' report, and then Views are used to deliver out the calculations they require.

For Credits etc, again we have used Activity Types with a range of custom fields to record who is doing what, and who achieved what.