Hello,
I am in charge of a medium-sized (14,000 volumes right now, but I plan to do some heavy weeding) collection of books at an archival institution. Currently the books are stored in an outdated bibliography-building software program that I absolutely despise, and I would like to replace it. We do not lend books to the public, so a circulation module is not a necessity. We do lend to staff within the institution, but we use old-fashioned sign out cards for that purpose.

I am considering a few options: building an Access database to hold all of the materials and finding a way to make it user friendly and easily-searchable; buying inexpensive cataloging software; or using LibraryThing as a simple way to store and search for books, with the benefit that researchers would be able to find out what secondary resources we have before they come without us having to fit an OPAC into our website.

Any thoughts or advice as to whether LibraryThing is a viable solution for us would be much appreciated!

It might help to know who sponsors this library. Is there money to buy supported library software? How much time do you have to switch over to Access? Access would be useful since you could individualize it to store the information useful to the library users and if you are familiar with the program, you can tweak it any time. You are pretty well stuck with whatever format comes with a dedicated library program.

LibraryThing has a very nice import feature, and the staff is very helpful if you have problems transfering from whatever you are using.

I will note that one limit for using LibraryThing is how many books you can catalog. "Limits - Organizational accounts are limited to a total of 5,000 books. They can grow to 10,000 books with permission."

Since you are over this by currently 4000 books (that would be very, very heavy weeding) I would lean toward gettting software. Most software places will have support staff to help you get things transfered to their program.

I would think creating the Access database would be time consuming, and possibly have issues when Microsoft updates their programs again. Good Luck

As for the size limit - it is worth talking to Tim anyway. LT isn't designed for medium and large sized libraries, and I doubt Tim wants to encourage those institutions as plain end-users, but it never hurts to ask (or even beg).

About that size limit, when looking at the zeitgeist, you can see that the 47 largest libraries all have over 10,000 books catalogued, so I guess the 10,000 is not such a hard limit after all...

Good point, I fogot to look there.

Actually, it's a limit for organizations. If you want to go that high on an organizational account, ask sonyagreen for permission.

T

7: Which raises the question (that I never thought of before I saw this thread): is there a limit for individuals?

Not if they're "yours." They have to be connected to you in a real way—have, want, etc. You can't just throw your local library into your personal account.

9: Cool. I'm on solid footing then. My personal rule is that I have to actually own a copy of a book before it gets put on LT.

(Apropos of nothing, I just finished alphabetizing my mass market paperback collection so I can actually find the copies of the books I own. It took about three weeks, but it feels awesome to have them all nice and organized!)

Mensagem editada pelo seu autor, Nov 9, 2009, 10:57am.

9>

There's a catalog of someone who imported most of the Questia catalog. (When we first noticed this she had everything tagged "questia" so it was easy to tell.) Now she's deleted that tag -- I guess to try to fly under the radar? At any rate, what makes that okay while doing the same with your local library (or with Project Gutenberg, as someone did back in the day) not okay? I don't see the difference, myself.

I am aware of that user. I gave dispensations now and then, when someone doesn't mean ill, and they put a lot of work into it. Things are tighter now, however.

>12. I gave dispensations now and then . . .

Did she make a pilgrimage to Portland and kiss your ring? ;)

We've modernized. I send the ring by mail, with a SASE.

>14.

Ah, yes. I forgot that was an option, ever since the second LibraryThing council.