1isleuven
Hi! I am a parent volunteer at a very small school in Belgium and have absolutely no background in library science or literature in general (science major here!) so please assume I know nothing. :) Because of the international nature of our school, some of our books are not in the LibraryThing catalog when I scan the ISBN. As I am at the start of this endeavour, I am wondering if I need to put new barcodes on all of our books and catalog that way or if there is a way to integrate the book’s existing ISBN with barcodes that I affix to books without ISBNs. Does that make sense? Also, I would like for the teachers to be able to check out books for students using only their phones as the school library does not have its own computer to scan books. I would love to hear any suggestions and tips you may have! Thank you so much!
2kristilabrie
Hi, isleuven, and welcome to LibraryThing and TinyCat! I work at LT and I'm happy to get you started setting up your library.
First, when you mention that some of your books aren't in the LT catalog when you scan the ISBN: do you mean that you're trying to add books to your library (either from the LibraryThing App, for example, or the "Add books" page, etc.) and you're not finding any results when you scan the ISBN? If so, you can always change the datasources that you're searching.
If you're on the "Add books" page, click to "Add from 4,967 sources" and then view "All sources" in the pop-up that opens. You should see a list of countries at the top that you can click on to see the datasources available within that country (including Belgium). Click any datasource to add it to your list of available sources when adding books. (You can also go to "Your sources" in the pop-up to reorganize them in a preferred order.) Then, when scanning-to-add books from the "Add books" page, you can select which datasource you're searching, which should hopefully give you better search results.
Regarding your note here: if there's "a way to integrate the book’s existing ISBN with barcodes that I affix to books without ISBNs". Can you clarify what you're looking to do here? If you're cataloging books with ISBNs, you can add them by searching for their ISBN or title/author, etc. If you're cataloging books without ISBNs, there's no way to assign them an ISBN - that is, unless they actually have one (in which case I'm a bit lost at what you're looking to do). You can still add non-ISBN records by searching for the title/author/etc. (we also support importing: https://www.librarything.com/more/import).
If you're looking at creating an internal barcode system within your library—using your own barcode labels and barcode numbers—you can certainly do this, but it doesn't really have anything to do with ISBN barcodes. An internal barcode system will make sure that each item in your library has its own unique barcode number and label, which is great for books without barcodes altogether or for books where you have multiple copies of each, etc. You can read up on our Barcode Support here: https://blog.librarything.com/2015/06/new-feature-barcode-support/
Looking at running checkins/checkouts from your mobile phone only, TinyCat should be great for this with one caveat: we don't yet support mobile scanning on TinyCat, so you'll need to manually search for a book's barcode/title/etc. when checking it in/out. TinyCat is otherwise mobile-friendly.
Another note about circulation: you can allow patron self-checkout, but we don't allow patrons to return items on their own. Only admins (or staff/volunteer logins, which you can add from your Admin Users Settings in TinyCat) can check items both in and out.
Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help as you work through your setup, or if you have any further questions here!
Kristi at LT
First, when you mention that some of your books aren't in the LT catalog when you scan the ISBN: do you mean that you're trying to add books to your library (either from the LibraryThing App, for example, or the "Add books" page, etc.) and you're not finding any results when you scan the ISBN? If so, you can always change the datasources that you're searching.
If you're on the "Add books" page, click to "Add from 4,967 sources" and then view "All sources" in the pop-up that opens. You should see a list of countries at the top that you can click on to see the datasources available within that country (including Belgium). Click any datasource to add it to your list of available sources when adding books. (You can also go to "Your sources" in the pop-up to reorganize them in a preferred order.) Then, when scanning-to-add books from the "Add books" page, you can select which datasource you're searching, which should hopefully give you better search results.
Regarding your note here: if there's "a way to integrate the book’s existing ISBN with barcodes that I affix to books without ISBNs". Can you clarify what you're looking to do here? If you're cataloging books with ISBNs, you can add them by searching for their ISBN or title/author, etc. If you're cataloging books without ISBNs, there's no way to assign them an ISBN - that is, unless they actually have one (in which case I'm a bit lost at what you're looking to do). You can still add non-ISBN records by searching for the title/author/etc. (we also support importing: https://www.librarything.com/more/import).
If you're looking at creating an internal barcode system within your library—using your own barcode labels and barcode numbers—you can certainly do this, but it doesn't really have anything to do with ISBN barcodes. An internal barcode system will make sure that each item in your library has its own unique barcode number and label, which is great for books without barcodes altogether or for books where you have multiple copies of each, etc. You can read up on our Barcode Support here: https://blog.librarything.com/2015/06/new-feature-barcode-support/
Looking at running checkins/checkouts from your mobile phone only, TinyCat should be great for this with one caveat: we don't yet support mobile scanning on TinyCat, so you'll need to manually search for a book's barcode/title/etc. when checking it in/out. TinyCat is otherwise mobile-friendly.
Another note about circulation: you can allow patron self-checkout, but we don't allow patrons to return items on their own. Only admins (or staff/volunteer logins, which you can add from your Admin Users Settings in TinyCat) can check items both in and out.
Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help as you work through your setup, or if you have any further questions here!
Kristi at LT
3Keeline
The case of multiple copies of a given ISBN is a real sticking point for using that as your inventory control. That is why many libraries opt for barcodes which are not in the ISBN series. Ultimately, a barcode is a number that is represented graphically with thick and thin stripes. A barcode reader device, even the cheap CueCat, can translate these stripes to the numbe. This number has to be stored in a field for your book catalog to be able to use it.
James
James
