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Library

Catalog of every book, periodical, microfilm and CD in your physical library. Members search it from the website; volunteers maintain it from the admin. Most society libraries are reference-only, so SocietyPress assumes yours is — switch on lending if yours lends.

What you can do

  • Catalog books, serials, microfilm, manuscripts, CDs, DVDs, ephemera and society publications.
  • Record call number, shelf location, condition, donor, acquisition date and value.
  • Tag each item with one or more Media Types, Subjects and Locations from word lists you control.
  • Let visitors search by title, author, call number, description, county, state or surname — or all at once — and narrow by year.
  • Show the catalog on your public site, to everyone or members only.
  • Sell society-published books from the same catalog — tick a box and the item appears in the Store.
  • Import an existing catalog from a spreadsheet (CSV), mapping its columns as you go.
  • Fill in missing publishers, years and covers from Open Library by ISBN.

How to add your first item

Library → Library Catalog → Add New Item. Title, author, publisher, year, call number and shelf location; pick its Media Type, Subjects and Location. Save.

If the item has an ISBN, add it, and Fill In Book Details (below) can look up the rest.

How to import a whole catalog

Most societies have their catalog in a spreadsheet, an old Access database, or printed cards. Get it into a CSV:

  • One row per item.
  • Whatever columns you have — title, author, publisher, year, ISBN, call number, shelf location, county, state, surname, condition, donor, acquisition date, value.
  • Don't worry about column names — the importer lets you match them on upload.

Library → Import Library. Upload, match the columns, preview, import. It handles dozens to thousands of rows; a library of 17,000 items takes about ten minutes.

Afterwards, Library → Fill In Book Details works through every item with an ISBN, filling in missing details and covers from Open Library.

How to set up your word lists and search columns

Library → Catalog Options.

  • The lists catalogers pick from — Media Type, Subject and Location, one entry per line. Delete a line to take it out of the dropdowns; items already using it keep it until someone edits them. Put back the standard list restores the starting set.
  • What a visitor sees in search results — untick columns your catalog doesn't fill in, and use the arrows to put them in order.
  • Lending — tick This library lends items out only if material leaves the building. Otherwise the catalog says nothing about borrowing.

How to put the catalog on the public site

SocietyPress makes a Library page when it's first switched on. You can also drop the Library Catalog widget on any page with the page builder. Its settings:

  • Items per page.
  • Show the landing page — collection stats, browse by type, popular subjects.
  • Show the search box.
  • Show available items only.
  • Require login to view.

Visitors search by title, author, call number, description, county, state, surname, or all of them, and open a row to see the full record.

How to sell a society publication from the catalog

For books your society has published — county histories, family genealogies, transcribed records:

  1. Open the item's edit page and find the Store Listing section.
  2. Tick List this item for sale in the Store.
  3. Make sure Value is above 0 — it's the sale price.
  4. Optionally pick a Store Category and write a Store Description (separate from the catalog description).
  5. Set the shipping fee per copy, and save.

The item now appears in the Store (if the Store feature is on) and stays in the catalog. A value on its own never puts an item in the Store, so things held in the collection stay out of it.

If something looks wrong

Covers aren't loading. Open Library limits how fast it can be asked and sometimes times out. Run Fill In Book Details again — it skips items that already have a cover.

An item shows up in the Store but shouldn't. Open it and untick List this item for sale in the Store.

Search isn't finding a known item. Check which field you're searching. Choose All Listed Fields to look in all of them at once.

Import says columns aren't recognized. During the upload step, match each column to a SocietyPress field, or skip it. Only the title is required.

Donor name is wrong on a batch of items. There's no bulk edit for donors yet; open each item and correct it.

  • Store — how the catalog → storefront link works
  • Records — for searchable record databases (cemetery transcriptions, etc.) — different module
  • Help Requests — when a member can't find something, this is where they ask