I am using a MacBook and purchased software that was inexpensive and designed for a Mac but It is not what I would call user friendly at all. I worked 3 years as a public school librarian and used two different softwares. Neither of which seem available for a very small church library. Is any one using library software on a Mac?
You need to be a member of Church Librarians Network to add comments!
Replies
I'd like to add some comments about LibraryThing. I haven't used it in a church setting but I have in a retirement home setting. (No circulation records kept.)
1. LibraryThing is internet based. You can access your catalog anywhere on anything that has internet web service available. That includes a PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet, etc. No program updates or backups!
2. It is almost free. ($25 for lifetime membership, but number of items may be restricted.)
3. Recently (from a senior's viewpoint) they added a lending (circulation) feature.
4. Jacket covers can be displayed, if desired. No charge.
5. Click on the title or author to examine reviews. Add your own reviews.
6. Not sure about the type of reports available.
7. Almost all you need to do to add an item to the catalog is to scan or type the ISBN.
Have you created a catalog on the Mac? If so, you might wish to see if it can be loaded onto LT. After all, it free to try.
They also offer TinyCat designed for the small library.
Book Systems, one of our sponsors, offers Atrium which is also web based but would require a monthly fee.
If you go the LT way, even if you don't barcode your books, iI'd suggest a barcode scanner from Amazon. I have a <$20 scanner that works great. Scan the back of the book, and most of the work is done.
6.
Thank you Buford. I need to be able to print spine labels and barcode labels as well. Also want to be able to keep track of who has the items. I would love for it to be user friendly so that a "librarian" would not have to be on duty during checkout times. I have Used Destiny and Alexandria in a school library setting and purchased Readerware for the church library. I do not care for it. Can't print labels easily. Will LibraryThing let you see what it past due and print labels? Thanks. This is a volunteer position at my church and am trying not to create a job for myself :)
Oh yes, labels. After writing my reply, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking of the fact that I didn't mention labels. What i have to say about LT and labels will probably make up your mind to not use LT.
As I mentioned in my reply LT is web based. Every thing (well, almost everything) that LT displays has to be formatted on the LT server, encoded into HTML. Your client device displays the information. So you may be using a Mac, a PC using Microsoft, Google or Linux software, a tablet or maybe a smart phone What you would like is for the guy's creating LT to be able to format your labels and control your printer. Not likely to happen.
OK, so working with what we have. LT allows the download of selected catalog entries (latest entries?) in one or two different formats. So it is up to you to create the labels from the download file.
You can Google LibraryThing Spine Labels and see what some people have done. Mostly they loaded the downloaded file into Excel Spreadsheet which produces a row for each catalog record, and a column for each entry (name, title, etc) and worked from there. No one gave a finished solution. If you have Microsoft Office for the Mac, it will have a version of Excel. I think LibrOffice (free Office replacement) is available for the Mac.
Are you familiar with LibraryThing? Up to 200 books FREE after that the rates are per year and small. Take a look: librarything.com. I have it for personal books. tried it for our Church Library, however future choices are leaning towards Companions, Alexandria Software. I became familiar with it while working as charter school librarian and found it to be very user-friendly. Not housed on Mac though, only on DeskTop. Hope this helps
Thank you Linda for your input.