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Cataloguing with the USB scanner

If your workstation has a USB barcode scanner (a wired scanner that plugs in like a keyboard), you can catalogue a box of books without a camera: you scan the ISBNs one after another, directly on the BibliOfelia screen.

It is the scanner counterpart of cataloguing by camera: same result (BibliOfelia creates the records and copies), but driven by the fixed workstation's scanner.

Scanner or camera?

The USB scanner is ideal at a desk, on a fixed station, and works even without a secure connection (https://). The camera is ideal on the move, tablet in hand. Both fill the same catalogue.

What a cataloguing session is for

A cataloguing session (also called a batch) is how you add many books at once to the catalogue. It works in three steps:

  1. You open a batch and scan every book in the crate, one after another. Nothing enters the catalogue yet: the batch is only a working list, which you can correct or empty.
  2. You check the list — and above all, you apply batch changes: tick several rows (or all of them) and assign them, in a single click, the same classification, the same location in the library or the same condition. That is the whole point of cataloguing together books that belong together.
  3. You send the batch to the catalogue: records and copies are created for real, and you can print the labels for that batch only in one go.

A validated batch stays available: from the list of batches, View batch shows which books it contained, with a link to each record.

Start a batch with the scanner

From Advanced → Inventory, click Cataloguing with the scanner.

As with camera cataloguing, you can set default values for the whole batch (classification, location, label). You can change them line by line afterwards.

Scan the ISBNs one after another

  1. The page opens with the input field already active: you have nothing to click.
  2. Scan the ISBN barcode on the back of each book (it starts with 978 or 979) with the scanner.
  3. On each read, the line appears in the list: BibliOfelia automatically looks up the title, author and language (OpenLibrary, Google Books, BnF…).

Several copies of the same book

Do you have two identical copies? Scan the same ISBN twice. On the second pass (after a few seconds), BibliOfelia adds an extra copy to the same record, without creating a duplicate. A too-fast re-scan is ignored, to avoid double reads.

Ofelia codes rejected

Cataloguing accepts book ISBNs (978/979) and magazine ISSNs (977). If you scan an Ofelia code label (290/291) already stuck on a document by mistake, it is rejected: here you register new documents, not copies that are already catalogued.

Finish and check the batch

When you are done scanning, click Finish and view the batch. The batch list appears. For each line you see the book found (author, title, language) and you can:

  • change the classification, location or condition — per line, or for several lines at once using the checkboxes;
  • adjust the number of copies;
  • delete a line (trash icon) in case of a scanning error.

Save the batch

Click Send to catalogue. BibliOfelia creates all missing records and all copies, with their Ofelia codes. You can then print only this batch's labels.

See also