DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMPUTERIZED STUDENT RESEARCH PROJECT SEARCH ENGINE SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1  GENERAL INTRODUCTION
It is safe to say that most activities such as storing of research material carried out in most universities in Nigeria are done manually. Therefore, there is a lot of strain on the individuals running the research library. A research search system is simply software developed for retrieving of research material without going through the stress of moving from one shelf to another in the research library. These activities takes place in the library with the help of a library administrator.   The goal of this research work is to provide a solution to the problem of a research library, by designing a computerized system which is user-friendly and GUI-oriented that will be compatible with the existing manual systems. The software to be developed will solve the problem of sorting and retrieving of research materials.  
1.2  PROBLEM DEFINITION
Problems associated with research system when manually handled by library staff in most University include: ·       
-   Research/Projects are sorted and stored manually on its appropriate shelf
-   Retrieving of research/projects material takes a lot of time depending of the number of topics involves. ·       
-   Loss or damage of any of the research material may leads to loss of a resources information ·       
-   Too cumbersome and time consuming to maintain     .
1.3   OBJECTIVE OF STUDY
The objective of this study is to develop an application that will ease the stress associated with the existing manual system as earlier stated, while focusing on a research search system. This study aims to achieve the following;                               
i.  To create a database management system (DBMS) which store research material and provides security for the  stored data.
ii. To provide quick and efficient means retrieving student research/projects material through a search system                          
iii. At the completion of this work, this system will improve the management of a research library which can be uses as a model in building digital research library.  
1.4  RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION
The proposed research can be justified by providing answers to the questions below:
i. Does the research extend the understanding of the phenomenon being investigated?  
ii. Does it elaborate, extend or fill in gaps in present knowledge?           
iii. Does the research question require data that is accessible or attainable at a reasonable cost or effort?           
iv. Finally, will it give the expected results result? After putting these aforementioned questions into consideration, I believe that this research is worth doing.
1.5  RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In order to realize the objectives of this research, it is important to apply adequate strategy in achieving the set goals. The methodology employed in the course of this study is to first outline the set of requirements to be met by the proposed system, where information related to the research work will be derive from the area of study; then envisage and implement the design of the system, using Unified Modeling Language (UML), along the lines of an object-oriented approach.
SOFTWARE DESCRIPTION
Programming Language: PHP
Programming Environment: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8
Software Requirement: Wamp Server