I worked as a contractor for a large science-based US government agency that had home built their catalog using OCLC numbers for barcodes. DO NOT GO THERE, I BEG YOU! Our circulation, inventory, and barcode system was built locally in an Access database and it was also a disaster. I moved the barcodes off of strictly OCLCn because the previous librarian hadn't accounted for needing to track parts and copies (we had to inventory annually as part of the contract). These barcodes were printed with a thermal printer. By the way, did you know that these labels are totally unreadable after left in a hot car on a sunny day? Laser printing might be better.
I don't know what the right solution is, but I would recommend using something with a community following. Even using something like LibraryThing or one of the mac products that lets you inventory your own library with a barcode scanner would probably suffice. You could seriously just use the barcode already on the book, and not do any spine label. With 1500 books and a lot most likely in 200's do you really need Dewey?
When you say putting them on the site - you might just be able to post a sortable list in a web page. That might be what you really need.
Christina
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Connolly
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2014 8:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Dewey code
Forgive my ignorance. When I looked up ILS I came to this paragraph that explains why:
"Larger libraries use an ILS to order and acquire, receive and invoice, catalog, circulate, track and shelve materials. Smaller libraries, such as those in private homes ornon-profit organizations <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit>(like churches or synagogues, for instance), often forgo the expense and maintenance required to run an ILS, and instead use alibrary computer system <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_computer_system>.^[/citation
needed <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed>/] "
source: Wikipedia
We are a church with 1500 books we would like to put on our website, and thought we would use this workflow:
1. Create barcode from isbn number and print label.
2. Acquire Dewey number from Library of Congress via z39.50, and print that to a label.
3. Affix labels to the books.
4. Place marc records into a Postgresql database and allow users to search via a browser, using Ruby on Rails for the front and back ends.
At the moment I'm trying to figure out step 2. I'm the church volunteer webmaster and not a coder, working with two other volunteers who happen to be career professional librarians but not programmers. If the Dewey numbers generated by the LC are insufficient, we'll tweak them over time. I just need to know how to isolate that one field to print it to our thermal label printer.
Thank you.
On 08/08/2014 06:12 PM, Kyle Banerjee wrote:
> Label printing practices vary by library. Just out of curiosity, why
> are you getting this information from a MARC file rather than the ILS?
> At many/most libraries, you'd need local Cuttering, item specific (e.g.
> volume/copy number), etc info not available in the bib record.
>
> kyle
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Tom Connolly
> <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Is there an open source way to format the dewey code for printing
>> book labels? Or can someone tell me how to isolate just the dewey
>> number from a marc file (I have MarcEdit; is there a better tool for
>> this simple task?) so it is the only field sent to the printer? (I'm
>> using Ubuntu 14.04 and printing to a Dymo 450) Thanks Tom Connolly
>> St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Naples FL webmaster
>>
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