I was just looking over it today for
our small church library. You can add/change Dewey numbers but I
didn't see any place where you could number (assign a number for a
future library barcode) a book, and as of yet, it doesn't do a true
circulation. I also couldn't figure out if the info could at some
point be exported to another database. That would be important if you
wanted to switch and didn't want to start from scratch. They are also
working on upgrading their system for their non-profit or for-profit
users, as we have different needs than a home library. I would
appreciate finding out more if you get other responses. You can use
mine in a "HIT" if you wish.
Joanne Ladewig (A.K.A. "Library
Lady")Library Media Tech
Lawrence Elementary, GGUSD
Garden Grove, California
shatz@verizon.net
Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.
Comments are my own and may not
represent the views of GGUSD
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You will need to pay for your
membership if you plan to put on
more than 200 titles a year. I love my
personal library on
there. I've considered doing it for
myself anyway. It's only
$20 I think.
Stacey Conrad
Library Media Specialist
Palmyra Middle/High School
PO Box 151
Palmyra, MO 63461
"I have always imagined that
Paradise will be a kind of
library." Jorge
Luis Borges
Interesting timing. I've also been
looking into Library Thing, but my project is with a church library.
This library has been uncared for for at least 7-8 years, so it is in
a sorry state. Our little volunteer committee is just getting
started so there isn't much to report yet.
I knew from the start that I didn't
want to do the manual labor for a paper card catalog, so Library
Thing seemed to be a possibility. In order to test it out before
bringing it up to the group, I did a test run with some books in my
personal collection (I lived in Australia for a couple years in the
1970's, and have about 80 books about that country, some published in
Australia, and some dating back to the 1970's. This seemed like it
would be a good test group.). Here is what I've learned so far:
the free version of LT only allows
you to have about 200 books in your collection. You can pay for
more holdings, and they seem to be pretty flexible-it almost sounds
like you can set your own price. For nonprofits, it looks like the
fee would be about $15 per year for up to 5000 volumes.
2 I used the ISBN # to search for my
books, and was very successful, even for things published n
Australia in the 1970's. I only had about a half dozen items that I
had to create new records for. And, it didn't take long to do the
uploading. I finished the (approx.) 75 books in about 2-2 1/2 hours
(uploading and ad ding subject headings).
Here's my big conundrum--For the
records I uploaded that had LC subject headings in the
record (you
can't see if they are there or not until you upload the
record),
the headings were put in a 'subject' field. They are what
they
are, you cannot change or edit them at all. They are also
hot
linked, and when you click on a link, it brings up other
books in
LT that have this subject heading, whether they are in your
collection or not. Over half of my books had these
headings. For
the others, I went to WorldCat and found subject headings,
but
when I went to edit my records, there was no 'subject'
field to
put them in. I put them in a 'comments' field, but found
this
makes it awkward when viewing my file in a spreadsheet (
need 2
fields for subjects).
4) Considering the age of some of my
books, it did a pretty good job of finding cover art. I was very
surprised that I got cover art for some 30 year old books.
5) A nice feature for our situation is
that there is a mobile version of LT thing available, so people in
the church who have a data service on their cell phone could add a
link to the LT catalog on their phone. When they're in a local book
store, they could quickly check and see if the library already had a
book or not. I think that is a really cool feature.
I'm still investigating what churches
in our area are doing for library catalogs, and (when I get a chance)
will do some more checking of LT to see if other church libraries are
in there (I get the feeling they're there--but not easy to identify
from their names). I have found a couple of local churches that have
some kind of homemade library database (MS Access??) that is
searchable from the church's website. Not sure I want to go that
route either.
I don't know how this will shake out.
I like LT enough that I will recommend it as we move ahead.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you
have other questions.
Donna
Donna Nix
Plymouth, MN
dgillila@aol.com
University of St. Thomas
Minneapolis, MN
denix@stthomas.edu
www.stthomas.edu/libraries
www.mnbatt.blogspot.com
I knew I was never going to get money
for automation so I started putting my school's library online with
Library Thing. If you'd like to check it out
my username is almostmls and the
password is lincoln. It is useful because teachers can look up books
and I have printed out a hardcopy, too. The downside is that
although the collection can be searched by author or title, I've
found I have to put in subject. I bought their cue cat scanner ($15)
and it really helps in adding to the database but some of my books
are so old that they don't have bar codes!! Or for some reason the
bar codes are unacceptable and I have to enter items manually. I've
found it's best for books and a little clunky for audiovisual
material. However, this could just be my experience. My district is
actually closing all of its elementary libraries. I have extra space
in my library so I've asked for the books from the other libraries.
But I haven't been able to enter everything yet.
I took the lifetime membership at $25
but you can also do yearly for $10.
I hope this helps,
Diana Lawsky
lawsky@optonline.net
Lincoln School
North Bergen, NJ
I have used librarything to put up a
large searchable booklist. You could certainly do it that way. But I
wonder: if you are hoping to automate in the future, wouldn't it be
better to download MARC records from the beginning? If you began by
using librarything, you'd have to do everything over again once you
were properly automated. I don't know much about the free open source
library software, but I do know people who have chosen it, and are
using it successfully. Koha is the best-known, I think. If you used
something like that, then you could also find downloadable MARC
records. You'd then have a "catalog" which was searchable
even if it didn't have copy information. Once you barcoded your
books, you could then enter that copy info along with call numbers
into the catalog. And from there you'd be able to circulate!!
If you post a hit, please include my
comments without attribution.
Thanks, and
Good luck.
----Original message-------------
> I have been appointed Library
Technician for a small non-automated school library, but we do have
Internet. Right now the catalogue is handwritten in a ledger. The
principal would like to automate in the near future. In the mean
time, I was wondering if it feasible to catalogue using Library
Thing
so that we would have a simulated OPAC
for patrons. Anyone with experience using Library Thing please reply
with suggestions.
Thanks in advance.
Patti Poirier
Library Technician
St. John Brebeuf School
Winnipeg, MB
pattie_poirier@hotmail.com
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