Agent Tattletale ([info]telegramsam70) wrote in [info]libraries,
@ 2008-05-01 07:23:00
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library catalog software question
is there a good, reliable piece of opensource software to create a usable, searchable database to organize a small (1000+) collection of books?

it needs to be cross platform (linux, windows) and have a user friendly interface.

I have searched and only found for-pay software.

geek-savvy librarian community, please hop into phonebooths and be my supermen or superwomen.



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[info]sasha_bee
2008-05-01 11:48 am UTC (link)
I've never used it, but some people have good things to say about Koha. Good luck.

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[info]telegramsam70
2008-05-01 01:53 pm UTC (link)
oh! thanks so much. I'll check it out.

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[info]msmemory
2008-05-01 11:50 am UTC (link)
Check out LibraryThing.com

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[info]meijhen
2008-05-01 12:46 pm UTC (link)
I will second LibraryThing.com

For that many books, there is a fee, but it's really minimal. Unless you have privacy considerations that aren't listed here, LT is a great option.

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[info]telegramsam70
2008-05-01 01:59 pm UTC (link)
oooo - this looks handy too.

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[info]bjorker
2008-05-01 09:45 pm UTC (link)
Yes, this. I love, love, love LibraryThing! I think it's $20-ish for a lifetime account, but they have it set up as donation-style. So you pay whatever you think is fair for the service. You can try it out before you have to pay, as they only require payment after 200 books have been entered. I see a fair amount of different organisations using it to catalogue their books.

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[info]deza
2008-05-01 12:28 pm UTC (link)
OpenOffice.com has a database program (OpenOffice Base) as part of it's regular download suite, and all of their programs are free. Base is pretty similar to MS Access. I've used Access before to manage small collections, and I know that at least one major university uses Access to track documents in their Records Management program.

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[info]telegramsam70
2008-05-01 01:54 pm UTC (link)
OpenOffice Base was my first consideration. anyone actually used it to organize and maintain a collection?

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[info]otterevil
2008-05-01 06:04 pm UTC (link)
I'm working on it :) I've got it mostly set up, I think. Need to do some more entering and then check the searchability factor.

I'm being slow, partly because someone is going to be donating a computer to the church library I'm organizing - and I need to see what that computer has available. And partly because I'm lazy :) and this is a volunteer job.

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[info]pivyca
2008-05-01 02:54 pm UTC (link)
I also second the Koha suggestion, plus suggest searching for library software on sourceforge.net. I can't recommend or guarantee any of those softwares, but they're all open source and last time I searched there were oodles of different library programs.

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[info]pogoids
2008-05-01 03:17 pm UTC (link)
BiblioteQ is something to consider.

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[info]jonaskaite
2008-05-01 08:50 pm UTC (link)
I wasn't techie-clever enough to implement Koha at the art museum library where I'm volunteering, and didn't want to pay for LibraryThing (~4000 items), but I was successful getting OpenBiblio running. It runs on the webserver and is about on par with a Wordpress install in terms of difficulty.

I've JUST started cataloguing, you can see it in action here. Neither pretty nor sophisticated, but servicable. No problems with it yet.

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[info]hunterandprey
2008-05-02 05:21 am UTC (link)
http://www.koha.org/about-koha/

http://about.scriblio.net/

The best reviews were all on the following
http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=
http://www.linux.com/feature/58836

http://drupal.org/project/marc

http://www.emilda.org/

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