Adding your first books

Contents

• Introduction

• Creating your database

• Adding Books Automatically
  • By ISBN
  • By Author/Title

Introduction

One of the main features of Book Collector is that it automatically gives you full book details and cover images for the books in your collection.
And all those are provided by our own central online book database called: “Core for Books”.

When you first try to add a book you will receive a warning that you are using the ‘Example’ database, it’s up to you how you proceed: You can try adding books to the example collection to get a feel for how everything works, or you can get started immediately by creating your own database.

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Creating Your Database

To get started with cataloging your Book Collection you’ll need to create your own database.

1. Click File > New Database
2. Save your database by clicking: File > Save Database
3. Name your database, select a destination then click Save

Make sure you remember where you’re saving your database.

*It’s always a good idea to make a regular, external backup of your database. In the event of computer failure, or worse, you can always recover your collection. If you are creating lists for insurance purposes then an external backup is essential.

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Adding Books Automatically

Adding books is done by searching that central online database, either by By ISBN or By Author/Title, then adding the results to your own local database.
Both methods are located in the Add Books Automatically screen. To open it, click the left-most button on the toolbar:

Here you have the Add Books Automatically screen. This enables you to search our online book database and download detailed information to your own personal database.

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By ISBN

by ISBN. The big advantage of searching by ISBN is that it will immediately give you the correct book and the correct Softcovers and Hardcovers edition. No need to wade through a long list of search results.

If you own a lot of Softcovers and/or Hardcovers, then consider getting our “CLZ Barry.” ISBN scanner app (available for iOS and Android).

Here’s how to add by ISBN:

1. Scan or type in the ISBN (if you type it in, you must hit Search Now)
2. Click Add Selected

*Pro Tip: If your ISBN search does not deliver any results, don’t give up! It does not mean our database does not have your book. We may still have full book details available, but just not “linked” to your ISBN. So just try again, this time searching by Title.

By Author/Title

The 2nd way to search our online database is by author/title. To search for a book by author/title:

• Type the author/title’s title in the author/title box field
• Click Search Now on the right or press enter on your keyboard to start the search
• Book Collector will search our database for appropriate matches.

Now you have two options:

1. You can just select the correct book entry and click the Add button. This will give you full book details (author, title, cover images, publisher, subject, , etc…), plus a “generic” cover image, what we call the “default” book cover.
2. Alternatively, you can “expand” the book entry to make the program show all different Softcovers and Hardcovers editions we have listed for that particular book. This way you can select the specific edition that you own, with the specific Softcovers and Hardcovers cover that you own (if we indeed have your Softcovers and Hardcovers edition).

*TIP: If you can’t find the book you were looking for, then check if you spelled the book title correctly. Also, it helps to enter the full title.

*Pro Tip: You can use the Queue Mode to add multiple books to the search queue. Click ‘Show/Hide Queue’ to enable/disable the Queue Mode. This is a Pro only feature.

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← Getting Started
Editing your book entries →

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