Subject: [NGC4LIB] Fw: [Web4lib] "Homemade" Catalog

From: "B.G. Sloan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2010 16:53:55 -0700

Any suggestion from you all that might help this person?
 
Bernie Sloan

--- On Wed, 6/2/10, Stephanie Zimmerman <[email-masked]> wrote:

From: Stephanie Zimmerman <[email-masked]>
Subject: [Web4lib] "Homemade" Catalog
To: [email-masked], [email-masked], "T is For Training" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Wednesday, June 2, 2010, 4:35 PM

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:  [email-masked]
website:  www.lancasterlibraries.org
Training Blog:  http://lslctraining.blogspot.com
_______________________________________________
Web4lib mailing list
[email-masked]
http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/

---

From: Tim Spalding <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2010 22:10:38 -0400

Well, LibraryThing *is* the answer! :)

I can send her a CueCat barcode scanner. They're usually $15, but we
give them away at shows and so forth, and I like the cause...

For what it's worth, though, even a super-fast barcode scanner isn't
much faster than searching and adding. Most books have barcodes, but
some don't, or they have a supermarket code, or they have a retailer
barcode pasted over the real code. (We handle Borders codes, but not
others.) And when you use a barcode scanner you interact less with the
books, so it's less enjoyable.

Tim

-- 
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding