[Web4lib] "Homemade" Catalog

[Thomas Bennett]

You might want to look at the June 2010 Issue 194 of the Linux Journal.  There 
is an articcle "Organizing a Library"  describing different open source 
software for the general public to organize their library.  The review 
includes Koha but the author was somewhat overwhelmed when seeing the Add a 
Marc Record screen.  Also reviewed is Alexandria, GCstar, and Tellico.  In the 
article he mentions he scanned ISBN numbers into a text file then imported them 
into the applications and Alexandria was the only one that automatically 
downloaded "the information about the books".  I suspect you could just as 
well scan directly into the application.  But also with Alexandria, "I had to 
install two gems(hpricot and htmlentites) ...  The system relies on Amazon for 
some of the look ups.  Due to a change in Amazon's policy, I had to sign up to 
get my own Amazon AWS access key."

The author had been using a Shelfari account previous to the review and was 
able to imporport that collection into  Alexandria and exprot from Alexandria 
to Tellico and GCstar.  

I suspect you would want to use an application that you could easily import 
into and export out of in case you move to a different system later, or need to 
share data, and for backup purposes.  If there is not a Windows version you 
could run Linux in a vmware player, there are several distributions ready to 
run on vmplayer.


hth

Thomas

On Wednesday 02 June 2010 16:35:34 Stephanie Zimmerman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> (Please excuse cross-postings)
> 
> One of my coworkers was awarded a grant and is required to organize a small
> library at a local Youth Intervention Center.  Here's what she is asking...
> 
> "As part of the grant we’re receiving from United Way, we’ve agreed to
> organize the YIC library.  We were hoping to create documentation of
> everything the YIC owns.  Rather than enter this into a spreadsheet on our
> own, we were wondering what kind of free library software is out there…  I
> have heard of some for MAC that are not free, like Monster Delicious –
>  where you use the iSight to scan ISBN and it loads all the information
>  (title, author, publication, etc.) into a program that looks much like
>  iTunes.  Do you know of anything free for a PC that we could do something
>  similar, but with a normal scanner like we use for checking out library
>  books?  Like perhaps we could scan ISBN’s and it would bring up all the
>  information into a program?  We would use this information to make quality
>  book purchases for the future – by seeing what topics we need more of and
>  so on…"
> 
> I did some research on Library Thing but don't see a way to scan the books
> in which would save a lot of time.  Does anyone know of any free or low
>  cost way to do such a thing?
> 
> Thanks for your time!
> Sincerely,
> 
> Stephanie Zimmerman
> Training Coordinator
> Library System of Lancaster County
> 1866 Colonial Village Lane, Suite 107
> Lancaster PA  17601
> phone:  717.207.0500 x 1281
> fax:  717.207.0504
> email:  szimmerman at lancasterlibraries.org
> website:  www.lancasterlibraries.org
> Training Blog:  http://lslctraining.blogspot.com
> _______________________________________________
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> 

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Thomas McMillan Grant Bennett           Appalachian State University
Operations & Systems Analyst            P O Box 32026
University Library                                Boone, North Carolina 28608
(828) 262 6587

Library Systems Help Desk: https://www.library.appstate.edu/help/
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