The Library of Congress (the Library) has completed development of a new inventory management system (IMS) to be used to track millions of Library assets at its offsite high density storage facilities. Development for FETCH, Finding EnvironmenT for Collected Holdings, was initiated in August of 2023 with the tool going into production in May of this year. Designed to be open source for the benefit of the IMS community, the Library has made the software freely available on github governed by a CC0 license. A technical installation manual and a user manual are also available.

Led by the Library, with significant input from storage and technical staff from Yale and Harvard Libraries and the ReCAP consortium, the tool was built using an agile development methodology. FETCH is a progressive web application, built using popular, scalable, and open technologies including Python FastAPI, Vue.js, and PostgreSQL, and is deployable via Docker containers. The browser-based tool works on desktops as well as Android devices, including portable data terminals. FETCH has online and offline modes so that staff can use the tool in spaces where Wi-Fi is not available and automatically sync data once connectivity is restored.

FETCH is built to accept data migrated from LAS, the software used by the Library to manage our offsite collections for over 25 years. Approximately 10 million Library items were migrated automatically into FETCH, preserving key metadata and history. In addition to barcodes for each item, FETCH stores information such as location in the warehouse and shelf footprint. Meeting rigorous federal security standards, FETCH also provides management capabilities, including statistical reports, self-service administration, and granular user permission management. The tool is built to meet all current Library requirements, and to be extensible to meet its future needs as well as those of implementers who may add in features for document delivery or complex shipping.

A brief demonstration of the software will be conducted this summer at the Annual American Library Association meeting in Philadelphia. More details to come via the ALA CORE Library storage listserv and the LC Library storage operations listserv.

Please direct any questions about FETCH to Matt Martin, Acting Chief of the Collections Management Division at the Library, mamartin@loc.goc .