Add/Import Large Batch of LCCN / Pre-ISBN books?

I'm attempting to catalog a large collection of books, many of which are pre-ISBN and instead list a Library of Congress Catalog Card Number.

Unfortunately I don't see a way to do this using the App and I don't want to drag my laptop around to every bookcase.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a fast/easy way to import a large amount of Library of Congress Catalog Card Numbers so that I don't have to manually search every single one?

Import is possible using the Excel example spreadsheet. Leave the ISBN column in place but leave it empty, then the import engine should pull the records in as is. Unfortunately, the fields it imports are limited and it won't allow a search for the missing fields.

>2 gilroy: I could definitely try that, I've done it in the past. However, I was hoping to avoid needing to type in EVERY title and author. It goes so much faster when you just have to type in an ISBN or LCCN.

>3 Ciarda: LCCN works best if Library of Congress is your data source. Some other libraries and OverCat may have LCCN lookup but don't count on it. That said, LoC is not always reliably available.

I don't think that an import from a TSV or similar file from a spreadsheet is going to do a lookup from an LCCN. I think the system is only geared to do that for ISBNs.

"Large collection" can mean different things to different people. Our collection has more than 9,000 books and it took a while (months) to add them.

How would you populate the spreadsheet? Where would you get the LCCNs? Will they be in a column of the spreadsheet?

You might be able to do lookups on this basis one at a time and add them if they work.

It is also possible to do lookups on the Add Books page (against your selected data source) using comma-separated data such as:

Montgomery, "Anne of Avonlea", Grosset

This would search for data in three fields and hopefully get you a fairly limited list. Of course, LoC might not have the reprint editions by a publisher like Grosset & Dunlap.

I mention these things to help you develop your own workflow that will get the job done. But the idea is not to populate an LT database as quickly as possible but as well as possible. At least that is my way of looking at it. You might have different priorities.

James

>3 Ciarda: Ah. I think I see your difficulty. Unfortunately, unless you don't care about the data that's drawn from the source into your library (save title and author), you'll need to touch every volume just to check to make sure you have details correct. I've been here over 15 years and still find books that I missed verifying because all I did was put in the ISBN.

>5 gilroy: Completely agree. I used the app to register a few quite recent books and used all the saved time on checking and fixing stuff afterwards.

Thank you everyone for your help.

I found the section on adding books via LCCN in the "Adding and Importing Books" wiki that I had somehow overlooked previously. However, I still haven't been able to get it to work. I have set Library of Congress as my source and tried searching with and without the hyphen, but I get No Results every time. I don't know if I'm forgetting an obvious step in the process.

>7 Ciarda: That would be because there is a bug regarding searching by LCCN:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/345775

>7 Ciarda: There's a known bug with LCCN search https://www.librarything.com/topic/328620. Since LT staff are tackling bugs this week, it's worth bumping the bug reoport. Also, LoC may still be throttling the number of z39.50 connections. Once upon a time they did that.

>8 gilroy: That's a duplicate of the one I linked to. Just FYI.

>8 gilroy: >9 lesmel: Thank you for letting me know! That's frustrating, but at least I know now that I wasn't inputting something incorrectly.