Finding a book and adding it by hand

The Add a Book page offers three tabs: Search (look up a title, author, or ISBN), Scan Barcode, and "No barcode / vintage" for books that aren’t found any other way — or have no code at all.

A book printed before ISBNs, or one whose barcode is long gone, can be catalogued from its title alone. You don’t need to scan or search first, and you never need to invent an author: leave Author blank when you don’t know it and the book is saved with no author rather than a made-up one.

On the website the form first asks what you are adding: a Book or a Magazine — and, where your library uses them, a DVD, Blu-ray, audio CD, video cassette, kit or map. Choosing Magazine swaps the title and author for the magazine and the issue’s volume, number and date (see Magazines). Editors, translators, illustrators, further languages and a reading level are under "More details".

1. On the website, open Add a Book and choose the "No barcode / vintage" tab. In the phone app, choose "No barcode / vintage" on the Scan tab.
2. Choose where it goes: Library (you have this copy) or Want list (you want it; no copy is added). The form opens on Library from Add a Book, and on Want list when you start from the want list’s "Add a book".
3. Type the title — the only thing required. Add the author, year, publisher and edition or printing if you know them; they are what tell one printing from another later.
4. Optionally photograph the cover, or choose a picture you already have, and crop it. The photo stays on your device until you save, so a book you decide against leaves nothing behind.
5. Save. Copy details — shelf, condition, what you paid — are offered only for the Library; the Want list takes a status (Wanted or On Order) and a note instead.

Before saving, AllMyBooks shows possible matches: records with a similar title, with their year, edition and publisher (missing details are shown as unknown) and whether your library already owns or wants each one. Choose "Same edition" if one is the book you have, or "Different edition / save my entry" to keep yours as its own record — a similar title is never merged on its own. If the check can’t be done just then, you’re told so, and can still save your entry as its own record.

If the book does print an ISBN or LCCN, you can type it in and choose "Look up this number" on the website. A match is shown for you to compare: "This is my edition" links your entry to it and fills only the details you left blank, while "Not my edition" keeps your entry and drops the number, so a modern edition’s ISBN never ends up on your old copy. When nothing is found, your entry and the number stay as they are.

If an ISBN you type has a check digit that does not add up, you’re told so beside the field, on the website and in the phone app. Correct it, or — when that really is what the book prints, as happens with some older books — choose "Keep as written". The book is saved with the number exactly as typed, and it is never looked up, because no catalogue holds a record under it. Changing the number afterwards checks it again. A number that is not an ISBN at all can only be corrected or cleared.

The photo is uploaded after the book or want is saved, and attached to it: a copy’s cover for the Library, or the want’s own reference photo. If the book saves but the photo doesn’t, you’re told exactly that and can try the photo again — retrying never saves the book twice. Switching to a different library before saving discards the unsaved entry rather than saving it to the wrong one. In the phone app, saving a book typed in by hand needs a signal; nothing is queued.

Books printed before barcodes became standard often have no ISBN at all. Many instead carry a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) — printed on the copyright page, usually as something like “72-91684” or “Library of Congress Catalog Card Number …”. You can type an LCCN anywhere you’d type an ISBN: the manual entry field beside the camera on the Add / Scan page accepts it, and it also works after a scan comes up empty.

Enter the number exactly as printed — hyphenated, spaced, or run together all resolve to the same record. AllMyBooks looks it up directly against the Library of Congress and prefills the details for you to review before saving. If the number isn’t found, you’re dropped into manual entry with it kept on the draft, so you can finish the book by hand. As with ISBNs, entering an LCCN for a book you already own warns you before adding a duplicate.

A book your library holds can be given the number it is missing from its book page on the web: under "Add an identifier", type the ISBN, the shop barcode (UPC), the Library of Congress number, an Amazon ASIN (a Kindle edition’s B0… code) or, for printed music, its ISMN (the 979-0 number on a score) and choose Add. Dashes and spaces don’t matter, and the page works out which kind of number it is. An ISMN is kept as the score’s own number, never as an ISBN. Scanning a score’s ISMN finds it in the catalogue; a score not there yet is looked up in the one book source we use that lists printed music, and one it does not know is added by hand.

1. An ISBN or LCCN for a book that has none, and that no other book in the catalogue carries, is added straight away for everyone who holds the book — and its cover and details are then looked up, which is how a book imported without an ISBN gets its cover.
2. A UPC is added alongside any the book already has, so that barcode finds it next time.
3. If the book’s ISBN has a check digit that does not add up, or the book has no ISBN but came with a code that is not one, the page says so above the box. A correct ISBN that no other book in the catalogue carries then replaces it straight away, the old code stays in the book’s details, and the cover and details are looked up.
4. A number that would replace a valid one the book already has, or that another book in the catalogue already carries, first asks where it comes from (see Correcting the shared record in Catalogue details), then is shown on your copy at once and sent to an admin to review — the page says which, and names the other book, because two records with one ISBN may be the same edition.
5. A mistyped ISBN is refused with a message; nothing is changed.

Shown on the web book page for a book your library holds. In the phone app an ISBN is changed through Put it right → Correct this book, which goes to review.

When a book is already in the AllMyBooks catalogue, you get it straight away and nothing is looked up. When it is not, we ask library catalogues and other bibliographic sources — the Library of Congress, national libraries and Open Library among them — and keep the first real answer for everyone, so the next person to scan that book gets it instantly. Members fill in the rest: a size, weight, page count, publisher or description that any member enters goes into the shared record where it was empty, and a change to something already there is reviewed first.

Swedish books go somewhere else first. An ISBN issued in Sweden — the ones that start 91 or 978-91 — is looked up in Libris, the National Library of Sweden's union catalogue, before any of the above. It is the authority for those books, and the three catalogues above are all strongest on English-language publishing, so a Swedish ISBN they had never heard of used to arrive as a bare title. Libris brings back the publisher, the year, the page count, the edition, Swedish subject headings and a classification number. You do not have to turn this on and there is no setting for it: the ISBN itself says which catalogue issued the book.

Books printed before ISBNs existed have no number to look up at all. For those there is one setting, under Library Setup: "Also search the National Library of Sweden". With it on, a book you typed or imported with no ISBN is searched in Libris by title and author. A result is used only when exactly one edition matches the title, the author and — where you recorded one — the year. When several printings match, nothing is changed, because an old book quietly filled in with the wrong edition is worse than one left exactly as you typed it.

French books are completed from the catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), in the background. For a book with a French ISBN — one that starts 978-2 or 979-10 — the BnF is the authority: its language, publisher, year, page count and Dewey number replace what another catalogue said, and its French subject headings are added. It only does so when its record has the same title as the book, so a book carrying the ISBN of a different edition is left alone. Anything you or an admin corrected by hand is never changed. The book's details credit the BnF and the date its record was last updated.

A book that has a Library of Congress number (LCCN) but no ISBN — typed in, or imported from another catalogue — is looked up at the Library of Congress by that number once, in the background. Its record often carries the ISBN; when it does, and no other book in the catalogue already has that ISBN, the ISBN is added and the cover and description are then fetched by it.

Whatever the source, a value you have typed yourself is never overwritten by a later lookup — the catalogues only ever fill in blanks.

Only an Admin of the library can change the Swedish-lookup setting; everyone else can see what it is set to.