[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Bar Code Readers, ISBN, and Amazon

[Ben Shum]

Hi Ted,

I think I've played with the program you've described, it ran on my 
Macbook, but cost money so I didn't get as far as I would have liked.  
It probably stores basic item information (simple stuff like title, 
author, etc.) in a non-MARC format of some kind if it's generating data 
from outside sources like Amazon.

With a full featured ILS like Evergreen (or Koha), information is 
usually stored in a library format called MARC or some variant, like 
marcxml in Evergreen's case.  While it would be interesting to build 
something like a scanner to read ISBN of an item and then pre-populate 
the data into Evergreen from third-party sources like Amazon, I'm not 
sure how it'd have to be done in practice as far as linking that data 
back up with internal MARC records.  There's certain cataloging rules, 
etc. that librarians might be able to comment further on (read: I am not 
a cataloger).  There has been talk in the past about projects to give 
Evergreen more flexibility to support other data formats and not only 
MARC, but those are just talk right now.

As with any open source project though, there's always potential growth 
for the future, and I'd be curious to see if any others in the community 
(developers and librarians alike) may think of a feature like the one 
you've described.

Regards,

-- Ben

On 3/13/2012 3:02 PM, G. T. Stresen-Reuter wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sorry if this has been addressed elsewhere but I can't find what I'm looking for (read the FAQs, searched the list) and hope someone can help. Part of the problem is I'm not sure what to search for...
>
> I'm the IT guy at a small school in the Canary Islands. I'm trying to find a new ILS for our tiny library and looking at Evergreen.
>
> Personally I own a book cataloging system (Delicious Library 2) that can read the ISBN number via my built-in laptop camera, look up the book on Amazon.com, and fill in the database automagically. It's a wonderful system and I'm wondering if anything like that exist for Evergreen (even if it means buying an external bar code reader).
>
> I've seen references to Z39.50 but it's my impression that that's not exactly the same thing.
>
> Any pointers?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Ted Stresen-Reuter
> http://tedmasterweb.com
>
>

-- 
Benjamin Shum
Open Source Software Coordinator
Bibliomation, Inc.
32 Crest Road
Middlebury, CT 06762
203-577-4070, ext. 113