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October 31, 2013

Libramatic – Catalog Your Collection

ss-libramatic
Libramatic is a web-based library management system that uses ISBN numbers to keep large quantities of books and albums organized. Libramatic turns smartphone cameras into barcode scanners, allowing librarians to loan books, pull up author information, and locate specific titles on their shelves without having to squint or type in any numbers by hand.

Adding books to your own library is as easy as scanning each book’s ISBN code using a USB barcode scanner — also known as your smartphone. Libramatic searches for the book’s information (like title, author, and cover art) and adds it to your personal catalog. Books can also be added to the system manually, if necessary. When you’re ready to loan a book out to a customer, scan the ISBN number and the customer’s library card using your smartphone’s camera. Libramatic will mark the book as “on loan” and your colleagues will be able to see that status change the next time they search for the book inside your library’s internal system.

By taking their collections into the cloud, libraries get access to bonus features like automatic reminders that can be sent out to patrons before books become overdue and digital book reservation tools. Libramatic has thought of all the “what-ifs” that go along with implementing a major system upgrade like this, and offers work around solutions for books that have the same ISBNs or no ISBNs at all.

Practical Uses:

  • Quickly catalog large quantities of books
  • Manage your library even when you’re working from home
  • Send automated reminders to patrons before their books are due
  • Help patrons locate books based on the author, title, or cover art

Insider Tips:

  • Make up an ISBN for any books that don’t have a number
  • Libramatic assigns each book a unique ID when multiple copies have the same ISBN
  • Libramatic runs on multiple platforms

What we liked:

  • Libramatic can scale depending on the size of the library
  • Automatic reminders can be sent out before books are due
  • Regular system updates are deployed without any downloads or user upgrades
  • Librarians can access their catalogs from any location

What we didn’t like:

  • To import their member lists, libraries need to email Libramatic a CSV file with the names of their members, which some libraries may not feel comfortable doing for privacy reasons

Alternatives:

Company Info:

  • Launched: July 2012
  • Privately Held
  • Headquarters: Dublin, Ireland
  • Founded by: Shane Curran
  • Web site: http://www.libramatic.com

Costs:

  • Gratis plan is free
  • Maximus plan is €29.99 per month

Comments

  1. I received a coplue dozen rejections for my novel, Unspoken, before I opted to go the route of self-publishing. It wasn’t the rejections that led me down that path either, at least not in the sense that one might think. I received an email that was sent to me from the assistant of a fairly well-established literary agent which consisted of, Thank you for sending **** the query for your novel, UNSPOKEN, which she’s read with interest. Although there were several strong elements to the narrative (especially the overall concept and poetic voice), I’m afraid that on balance she was not sufficiently compelled by the book to feel that she would be able to market it as effectively as you’d like to publishers.We do hope that you will soon find a good, enthusiastic champion for UNSPOKEN.This comes with all best wishes. That bit of praise contained within the rejection hammered home the fact that I could have written the most brilliant manuscript that has ever been seen, and it would more than likely receive hundreds of rejections before anyone actually accepted the full manuscript for perusal. It’s a problem with the market being at saturation point, I think. There are too many aspiring authors with far too many manuscripts for the agents and publishers to really pay adequate attention to even those that perhaps deserve it.I decided on self-publishing because I wanted to see if I couldn’t get myself up and going without a publisher behind me; if I couldn’t make some sort of name for myself in time for my next manuscript to maybe receive a bit more attention. It remains to be seen whether that was a wise decision, but I stand behind it just the same.All of us, the self-publishers, have our different motivations for why we do what we do; and, right or not, at least we’re doing something. It’s better than sitting at home with a manuscript that never sees the light of day because we’re too afraid to take a leap of faith and see where we land.

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