Catalogue details

Open the statistics strip on My Library (press Insights) to see how complete your records are, in plain sentences with a link to fix each: "29 of 34 books have page counts — Complete the 5 →", "33 of 34 books have a cover image — Add 1 cover →". Purchase price is only listed once your library records prices. Each link opens My Library filtered to exactly those books, and the count, the list and the statistics then describe the same set.

Shelving is counted in copies, because where a copy stands is a fact of that copy, not of the book: "31 of 40 copies are shelved — Shelve 9 →". Its link opens the books that have at least one copy with no location — including a book whose newer copy is on a shelf but whose older copy is not — under a "Missing location" filter chip, and the header counts both: "7 books · 9 matching copies". Each book’s card lists its copies with their locations, so the ones still to shelve are the copies with none. Page counts, covers and prices are counted per book, since every copy of an edition shares them. The home page’s "copies not shelved" task uses this same count.

• Your home’s tasks →
• Multiple copies →

Every library that holds a book shares one catalogue record for it, so a wrong author, ISBN or series number is wrong on every shelf at once. Filling in a detail the record left empty is applied straight away. Changing one that already has a value goes to review, and your copy shows your value in the meantime.

1. A change that goes to review and touches the title, the authors or contributors, an ISBN, LCCN or other identifier, the series or its number, or the Dewey or LC class asks first where it comes from: the printed book in your hands, the publisher’s page, a national library record, or a book data provider’s record. A link and a short note are optional.
2. Choose "Send for review". Cancel instead and nothing is saved — the editor stays open with your changes.
3. Anything else, and anything that fills an empty detail, is saved without asking.

In review, an admin sees your source beside the change, and is told when the record has changed since you proposed it, when another member has proposed something different for the same detail, or when another book already carries the number. They may apply some of your changes and not others; one they leave stays on your copy as your own version. Every applied change is recorded with its source, so it can be checked and undone later — and undoing a change never overwrites a newer correction made since.

Help fix this record: on the page of a book your library holds, a small card may ask about one gap at a time — "Who wrote this?" when the record has no author, "Which number in …?" when it knows the series but not this book’s place in it, and the book’s class number with where it came from. Each asks for the value and its source together. "Not now" hides the card for that book on this browser. No counts or rankings of anyone’s corrections are kept or shown.

For Library admins and members on a book their library holds. Guests can’t propose corrections and don’t see the cards. The phone app asks for the source the same way when you save corrections.

A book record can carry its format — the binding: hardcover, paperback, mass market paperback, board book, spiral bound, leather bound, library binding, audiobook, or ebook — and, for a translated work, its original title, the title in the language it was written in. Both are catalogue facts about the edition rather than about your copy: if you own the hardcover and the paperback of the same title, those are two different editions and belong as two records, each with its own format.

Both fill in automatically where the catalogue sources know them, and both are optional — a book with neither looks and behaves exactly as it always has, with no "unknown" placeholder. Where a source reports a binding we can’t confidently match to one of the listed formats, the field is simply left empty rather than guessed at.

1. To set or correct either, open the book and tap Edit: format is a dropdown of the listed options (choose "Not recorded" to clear it), and original title is a plain text box.
2. Filter by format from the Filters panel on your library page — it lists only the formats your library actually holds, so you never pick one that returns nothing. It combines with your other filters, and books with no format recorded are left out rather than lumped into an "unknown" pile.
3. Collection insights adds a "By format" breakdown alongside author, genre, decade, and language.

Original title is searchable alongside the catalogued title, so you can find a translated edition by the name you know it under — searching "Cien años de soledad" finds your copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Because both describe the shared book record rather than your copy, an edit follows the usual review path: filling in a field that was empty applies straight away, while changing one that already has a value is queued for review. If your library already defined its own "Format" custom field, nothing is migrated or deleted — you will simply see both, and you can remove yours if you no longer want it. Both fields ride along in your CSV export and JSON backup.

A record keeps the people who worked on a book besides its authors — editors, translators, illustrators, and anyone else as a contributor — each with their role, and a person with two roles listed under both. They show under the authors ("Translated by …", "Edited by …"); in your library each name is a link to a search of your library for that person, so searching a translator’s name finds the books they translated, after any they wrote. A contributor is never turned into an author. When a catalogue record gives a contributor’s name in its original script as well — a MARC file’s 880 field linked to the name, say "Лакшин, В. Я." beside "Lakshin, V. Ia." — both are kept and the original shows in brackets after the name. Two names are never joined as one person just because they look alike.

A record can also be in more than one language, in order — an interlinear New Testament is English and Ancient Greek, a signed video is American Sign Language. The first is the main language, the one shown wherever a single language is. Cantonese and Min Nan are kept as their own languages, not as Chinese, and a record that says its script keeps it — "Chinese (Traditional)" — while a country on a code (zh-TW) is dropped and never turned into a script. Undetermined and multiple languages are kept when a record states them. A source’s language codes are also kept as it gave them, so one we cannot read yet is not lost.

1. Open the book and tap Edit. Languages sits where Language did: add one from the list, move one earlier with its arrow, or remove it. Contributors are under "More details" as name and role rows.
2. Filter by language from the Filters panel — a book matches when any of its languages does. The list offers only the languages your library holds.
3. Both also fill in from the catalogue sources where they know them, and from Readerware and LibraryThing imports, but only where the record had none.

Every record says what it is. Books and magazines are what AllMyBooks is for and are always offered. DVD, Blu-ray, audio CD, video cassette, kit and map are offered too, but only where your library uses them: automatically once it holds one — for example after an import brings one in — or always or never, as your library’s settings say. A DVD or a map has no binding, so its format is left empty; a record can also carry how many discs, cassettes or volumes it is ("DVD, 2 discs", "Hardcover, 3 volumes").

1. Change what a record is from its Edit page, under "More details".
2. Filter by it from the Filters panel ("What it is"), shown once your library holds more than books.
3. Collection insights adds a "By media type" breakdown once your library holds more than one kind.

Only an Admin of the library can change when other media are offered (Library settings). Turning them off never hides what is already recorded: a DVD still shows as a DVD.

For a school, classroom or children’s library, a record can carry a reading level in your own words ("Grades 3–5", "Ages 8–12") and a Lexile measure such as 820L, AD560L or BR100L. A Lexile that is not one is refused when you save, with a message, and nothing else on the form is lost. Both show with the book’s details, are edited under "More details", and come across from Readerware’s Reading_Level and Lexile_Level.

Once any book in your library has one, the Filters panel offers "Has a reading level" and a Lexile range — from 500L to 800L, say. A beginning-reader measure (BR) counts as below zero, and a book with no Lexile is left out of a range.

If your library collects a series — Discworld, Wheel of Time — the Series & gaps view (My Library → Library tools → Books → Series gaps, also linked from Collection insights) groups your owned books by series, lists them in order, and names the positions missing in between ("you own #1, #2, #4 — missing #3"). Gaps are only the positions absent between the lowest and highest volume you own; it’s a fact about your own shelf, not a claim about how long the series is, and there’s nothing to buy attached to it.

Series information fills in from catalogue data where it’s available, so it can be sparse or uncertain. You can set a book’s series name and position by hand from its edit page (under "Series") — a value you set takes precedence and won’t be overwritten by later catalogue data. If another member already set a book’s series by hand, your change is sent for review instead of replacing theirs. Leave it blank to keep whatever’s already recorded; the position is optional, and a book with a series but no position is listed separately rather than guessed.

Each book’s own page answers the same question for that one book. Under "In the catalogue", "Next in this series" names the volume before and the volume after it by recorded position, and lists the series around it in order; "More by" lists other books under the same author credit; and "Other editions" lists editions linked to the same Open Library work — never just books with the same title. Signed in, each related book says whether your library holds it ("You own this", how many copies, which shelf, and whether they are on loan), or that another of your libraries does ("Also in …"), and gaps in the series around the book are marked ("#3 — not in this Library", or "no record" when nothing in the catalogue has that number). Guests see the same, read-only. The phone app shows the previous and next volumes, other editions and more by the author on the book screen when it is online. The public page shows the books without any of this, and never a missing-volume claim.

Topics say what a book is about: "Ethics", "Ancient Greece", "Juvenile fiction". They come from the catalogues a record was found in — the Library of Congress and Open Library call theirs subjects, other catalogues call them categories — and from what members add. AllMyBooks shows them as one list, each label once, on the book’s page, in the book editor, in manual entry, when you confirm a scanned book, and on the phone.

1. To add one, open the book’s Edit form (on the phone: Correct these details → More details), type in Topics, and pick a suggestion or press Enter. A topic nobody has used before is yours to use at once and is suggested to you on the next book; an admin reviews it before other people are offered it.
2. To remove one, press the × on its chip and save. The label goes from every source that carried it. Book records are shared between libraries, so your copy shows the change at once and it is sent for review before the record changes for everyone else.
3. Press a topic on the book’s page to see every book in your library with it. The filter reads "Topic: …", and Collection insights counts each book once per topic.

Signed in, the book’s page and the editor offer Source details under the topics: the catalogue’s subjects and categories exactly as they were recorded, and your change while it waits for review. Nothing there can be edited; it is there so you can see where a topic came from, and why one you removed is still on the record until the review.

Topics are not your tags. Tags are your own way of grouping books — "to sell", "signed copies" — and they stay private to you; topics describe the book itself and are shared with every library that holds it. A topic never becomes a tag, and the topic suggestions never offer one. Reading genre and audience (below) and where a copy is shelved are separate again. A topic is always optional: no way of adding a book asks for one.

• Tags →
• Correcting a book on the phone →

Beside its topics, a book can have a reading genre — what kind of reading it is: Fiction, Fantasy, Biography, Poetry — and an audience — whom it is for: Children or Young adult. They are three separate answers: a children’s science book has the audience Children and the topic Science, and no genre called Children’s. Audience is not the reading level or Lexile measure, which describe how hard an edition is; one never fills in the other.

Most come as suggestions, worked out from the book’s catalogue subjects: "Science fiction" suggests Fiction and Science Fiction, "Juvenile literature" suggests the audience Children. A suggestion is marked "suggested" on the book’s page, on the website and on the phone. Adding a book never asks you to choose one, and never waits for them.

1. On the book’s page, under "Reading genre and audience", press the × on one to remove it. A removed suggestion is remembered: it is not suggested for that book again, whatever later updates the record.
2. Press "Add a genre or audience" and pick one from the list.
3. Type a name that is not in the list to propose a new genre. Your library can use it straight away — it shows "in review" — and other libraries see it only once it has been reviewed.
4. In the library’s Filters panel, Genre, Audience and Topic each narrow the list, and Collection insights breaks your books down by topic, by reading genre and by audience separately.

Adding and removing need the Admin or Member role; a Guest sees them read-only. Genres and audiences describe the shared book record, so a change shows for every library that holds the book — except a proposed genre, which stays in your library until it is reviewed.

Each library has its own currency and measurement system, so a household in Sweden or the UK does not have to change dollars and millimetres on every book it adds. A new price starts in the library’s currency, and a new weight and size start in grams and millimetres (metric) or ounces and inches (imperial), on the website and on the phone. You can still change any single entry.

1. Go to Library Setup from the account menu and find "Currency and units".
2. Leave "Automatic" to follow what most of your books already use — or US dollars and metric when there is nothing to go on — or pick a currency and a system to fix them.

Nothing already recorded is converted. A book entered as 24 cm stays 24 cm, and a price in euros stays in euros; the setting decides what new entries start in and how the library’s totals read. A price is never converted; only the library’s value total is, approximately, as below.

The library’s totals follow the setting too. The total weight, total volume and average book size under Insights → Physical are shown in kilograms, litres and centimetres for a metric library, or pounds, cubic feet and inches for an imperial one; the phone app’s library summary shows weight and size the same way. The value figure above your list, and on the phone, is in the library’s currency. When some of your books are priced in other currencies, their prices are converted at the European Central Bank’s daily reference rates and added in, and the figure is marked as approximate (“≈$4,180”), with the converted currencies named beside it; point at the figure to see the date of the rates. A currency the bank publishes no rate for is left out and named (“not counting RUB”). Insights → Pricing still lists every currency’s exact total.

Only an Admin of the library can change these, on the website; Members and Guests can see them, and the phone app shows them in the library summary.