I was looking for a software product to post our catalog on the web, email late book notices, print our own barcodes for books, etc. as well as (eventually) do circulation. I found this product recently and I wondered if anyone else has used it? It seems to do all we need at a very reasonable price. I would like to know your experience with this product and with the tech assistance. Thanks!
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It does sound like the program has some good helps. I've had trouble deleting from dropdown list before also. I found sometimes if you right click on the name and then use the delete button it will delete it. I was wondering what fields they used for some things which I will need to know when I import my database. Thanks for the insite on the sample records. I had never heard of anyone using the first two letters of the authors name and the first two letter of the title for the call number. Guess fields names are different. I always use the Dewey # for the "Call Number" and was taught that the first three letters of the author's name goes on the spine under the Call Number. I used "Call A" for my other field name. (If it's a biography you use the first three letters of the name of the person about whom it is written) I thought that was universal practice. Anyway I will need to see what fields are used for before I import and I'm glad to know there are sample records. Thanks again for taking time to give helpful suggestions.
Mary Anne,
Yes, many libraries use the Dewey number and then the three author letters, or three biographee's letters in the case of a biography, but not all. Public libraries around here print out the entire last and first name, which is more accurate but winds way around the spine. I'm not sure why the original church librarian did it the way we have it now, but I think it was to make shelving the same author's books by title easier, sort of a simple version of "Cutter" numbers. (If you don't know what those are, don't worry - they're pretty much obsolete at most libraries). A lot of Christian authors write consitently on the same topic, so their books have the same Dewey, so also having a bit of the title on the spine is an extra help to organize when you have three or more by the same author, same topic. When I download records in the Organizer Pro, the assigned Dewey lands in the Dewey field, so I just leave it there because I might want to refer to it at some point, even though I might assign a different Dewey for it in the call # field. That's kind of a nice feature actually. For example, I try to keep all my parenting/discipline books together and not all of them come in with the same number; those that don't, I reassign to the 173 shelf because that's where we will browse for them. But I still retain the original LC assigned Dewey in the other field, in case I want to know what it was originally.
Yes, we tried it for 30 days. We decided to buy it. I've been adding nonfiction books so far. Every automation system is different, and this works differently than others I've used, but the price is very competitve for a small library.
Things I do like so far: 1. if you're not sure about something it's usually easy to get a help link to their website with information right as you are working on the program. 2.You can easily email late notices in bulk to patrons. I haven't tried it yet but it will be much easier than doing it manually from home, as I am doing now. 3. Also, it will print up spine labels and barcodes, and other things like patron cards if you want them. 4. It also has modules included for DVDs and music. 5. It has a "Working Database" so the cataloger can add books separately while the check-in & out or catalog is being accessed from the "Library Database." Then you update the "Library Database" when you're done with the cataloging for the day.
Things I don't like: I personally prefer a handbook for quick reference (there is no purchasable handbook) - so I ended up printing out a lot of the info from their site and creating my own handbook with a binder and separator tabs. I like to make notes on things as I go along. Also, you cannot just add additional copies of the same title as copy 2, etc. you have to enter it as a different book and add "Copy 1" to the first copy's title, "Copy 2" to the next one, etc., so they are essentially individual titles. But most church libraries only have 1 copy of most items, so this isn't a bit deal. If you have a lot of duplicates, it might be.
We're going to try to connect our catalog to our church website so people can view it at home. It ihas this capability, so hopefully our church tech guy can get it set up. I know some churches who use other products have had problems, so that's why I didn't buy those. We're starting cataloging on nonfiction because that is the hardest to find by title or author if you have shelved by Dewey. Fiction is usually requested and shelved by author so it's much easier to determine if you have it available or not.
If the book has a record with Library of Congress or Amazon (or you can find other sources) it pulls in those records very easily via ISBN (you can use a barcode scanner), and then you just add your own barcode # and add whatever else you want to the record. I like that it has some extra fields to personalize your records. We will probably use one of those fields to indicate a "Pastoral Recommendation" title. However, I've found that many books from Christian publishers have no cip on the verso, and even fewer of the older ones have cataloging available online - I'm doing most of the entries so far by hand. Newer books usually have records. I'm going to try some larger Christian universities and see if I can get the records from there for the older items.
I would recommend that you do try the 30 day trial and get used to the program first. Maybe you want to go to the website and print out the info and create your own notebook first and familiarize yourself with it. If you haven't used a library automation program before, get someone who has to help. You'll need to set aside a large number of barcodes for patron barcodes. We started our nonfiction at 10001 so we have all the numbers up to that for patrons. Have a notebook handy and keep track of what number you used last. I also marked the book in pencil with its new barcode # on the flyleaf until I start printing barcodes. If you have a megachurch you will want to start higher since you'll probably want at least a 3 or 4 digit number for each patron (Start patrons with 101 or 1001). If you have a school as part of your church library patronage, they do have a school version, which I didn't look at yet. That might suit your needs better, even if you also have regular patrons. Keep me posted.
Our church has a website which I keep updated. I am using an old DOS data base right now for the library with a dot matrix printer. DOS programs aren't supported by the newer Vista and windows. My son was able to put a DOS box on my home computer but the box wouldn't open big enoubh to read anything when he tried to put it on the laptop. I can export the data base which I have done into Excel and have a link on our media page to open an excel workbook with tabs for searching by title and author. But I haven't updated it for a long time as I have to either up date the excel program in addition to the DOS program or export it all again. I'm not able to print my labels from Excel so it's double work to keep it updated. My son set up the site for the church using Drupal and we use his friends server for a very small yearly fee. Does your church have it's own server or is it an off site one? Some of the more expensive programs have an additional cost for web availability. I would very much like to have our Media Center available on line also with an easier way to update. So keep me posted as how your doing on that. I was glad to hear their was no additional cost to be able to have it. We are a small church.
Were you using letters in your accession numbers to distinguish CD, CT, DVD, or did you just use numbers. Do you have to have a unique number for each item before you import into the data base? Some programs I looked into said you had to have a unique field. We have a unique situation as long ago when I first set up the database I had a dream of uniting all the church libraries in our small town into the one database and I made a "Location" field which I planned to use to separate the church libraries. We also had books which people were willing to place into our church library to share but they wanted to retain owenership and be able to remove them and take them with them if and when they moved. So I used the "Location" field to separate them from the media owned by the church. So accession numbers are duplicated but the database let you set up the screen view however you wanted it so the "Location" field was always in view and was also printed on the spine label with the accession Number for easy shelf checks above the Dewy Number. So I'm glad to hear their are extra fields you can use however you wish. I am thinking that the barcodes will take the place of accession numbers. But can there be letters in front of the numbers to distinguish the type of media on the barcode or is that needed? I know nothing about setting up barcodes.
Having the "Working database" sounds like you would be able to import records more that once. That would enable me to do books separately from other media and do it little by little. Sounds like I could keep the "loaned" media separate from the church owned media by having a different set of numbers reserved for the "loaned" media. Thanks for the insite of keeping the begining numbers reserved for patrons and starting the media barcodes with bigger digits. I guess barcodes can handle more digits than I'd ever use. But I guess if I ever got to the place of including other churches if I started out with big digits, there would be room to give each church a different begining number. That's something to keep in mind! What scanner did you purchase and are you happy with it? I recently purchased a Dymo LabelWriter 450 Turbo and I was wondering if I could use that to print barcodes? It is one across and it prints landscape.
You mentioned there were separate modules for music and DVDs. Are these modules linked? If some one is searching for a song, do they have to open a separate database to search for it? I had processed a lot of music cassettes and my database has each song listed in different fields, but searching for one song was next to immpossible as you had to search too many fields. That ability would be great. Searching titles just didn't give the info people were wanting.
If you download the trial version and import your database do they just permently activate the the version you have if you decide to purchase it? You won't lose all the work you did during the trial period will you? Can you have the program on more than one computer that is not networked like the church computer and my home computer? And do you have to have the same opperation system on both computers? I have Vista on the church laptop and Windows XP on my computer.
I appreciate your taking the time to reply and will look forward to your response to this. Thanks.
Sorry to take so long to reply - I've been busy!
No, it doesn't require an acquisition # or any number at all - you can catalog by title and author, etc. and add your desired barcode later. How that would work with a database transfer, I have no idea. However, the folks there are very good about answering email questions promptly. I am starting to catalog my nonfiction but when I do another format, I will set aside a range of barcodes for that. The program has a format section (books, DVDs, etc.) - it's a drop-down and you click on the selection and it enters it for you.
I'm pretty sure our church has its own server. There is a location field built in. There is a field for call number and a separate field for Dewey #. For the call # I enter the Dewey # I've assigned it and then the first two letters of the author's name and the first two letters of the title. This is the way we've always processed and I wanted to keep that method. But since I'm doing all the older books first, I can go back and change it if I want before printing out the spione labels, which I will do in a batch printing.
I don't use accesession numbers any more, and most people don't. Years ago you needed it to trace back the record to the publisher you ordered from - now there's no need for those records that I know of, since replacing the book is so easy with the Internet. The program has fields for an accession date, a purchase date and a evaluation date (could be used as an inventory date). It also has an evaluation field with the selections of new, excellent, good, fair, poor. Most of mine are in good condition, but some have some "foxing" at the edges of the pages (turning brown, or brown streaking) so in those cases I'll select either fair or poor and under Notes I'll make a comment about the foxing, the date, and my initials. Also, any comments about other conditions (pages torn, cover faded, etc.) could be noted here.
The modules aren't really separate for the different formats - you just select the kind you want from the Format field. I would try out the trial version. Try importing and see what happens.
About the Working Database - it's for materials the automatic search can't find - (I was confused about this) - you enter ISBN numbers and if it finds them, it automatically moves them to the regular database for you to finish the records, but if not, then yiu use the working database to do them manually. That's all I have time for tonight. I'm still learning it.
Oh, my, what a lot of work you and your son have put into your library database!! I admire you for your diligence, but I do encourage you to find a system which can be maintained and used by others if, heaven forbid, you had to move away or had to be out of the library for a period of time! And, keep it simple!
Contact the two companies in the sidebar of this website: Concourse and PC Card Catalog. Tell them your situation and they will work with you! There are other library automation software programs which work well in the church library, but these two were designed especially for church libraries. I believe that both have trial programs which you can use for a few weeks.
I am not familiar with the program that Joanne has mentioned in the previous email, but it sounds as if she is getting good results. Some programs are able to import an Excel file, but I don't know how that works. Be sure to ask those questions when you contact the company. And, VERY IMPORTANT --- ask what kind of support you can get with the program and what kind of Help files are a part of the program. I have found that in the program that we use (Concourse) and with PC Card Catalog, the Help files have most of the answers that I am looking for or that other people ask me about!
Good luck in your search! Do it soon!