As my husband designed and built our oak shelving, I began to sort through our collection. As we progressed from piles by letter, to stacks by author's last name, I began to realize the inadequacy of my traditional excel spreadsheet. I needed ready access to certain types of information about each title. To create such a database by hand would take more time than I had summer. I decided to take my offline problem in search of an online solution.
As part of a literacy drive within our school next year, I am hoping to use my room as model classroom library. I will need to assist my student's in finding the appropriate choice reading book. In order to do so, I will need instant access to a book's reading level, age level appropriateness and perhaps a synopsis of the book.
When I found Book Retriever, I found so much more. My children and I spent hours separating our collection into a home library and a classroom library. We each downloaded the free Book Retriever app. It was simple to use and worked very consistently.
Once we logged our devices onto the account (one android phone, three iPads) we could choose "quick add" and the QR code reader would appear on our device. With one bleep. the book would appear within my library.
If the ISBN search was unsuccessful, then we would leave the app and search for the book online by title and author. Of the 1250 books in our home library, all but 200 scanned directly into my online library. Of the remaining 200 books, many were missing an ISBN number. Only about 30 books had to be entered manually because they were not present in the system.
One of the benefits of this program is the ability to create multiple locations for books. I was able to create a set of books at home as well as a set of books for my classroom. One of the constraints of the program is that "location" cannot be entered in en masse. Since I could not enter a large number of books under the umbrella location of "home" we had to spend an enormous amount of time entering the 16 pages of books one book at a time. It took us nearly as long to add the location portion of the book as it did to enter the books initially.
However, once a book is scanned into the system, the bevy of information at your fingertips is astounding. Not only do I have the title and author's name, I have the genre, a synopsis, the book's worth and a picture of the cover to assist my students in finding the offline version. To make this information even more valuable, with one button I can search my library by reading level using GRA, Lexile levels, AR and AP reading levels. It has never been easier for me to match a student to a book.
My books are housed through the Book Retriever website for a fee of $3 per month. Within the website, I can create an account for each student in my class. I can use the account to check books out, back in and to create an archive of the books a student has already read. The online tools can also be used to print information labels for your books.
Another constraint I asked about was the inability to share the library online in a view only mode. I would love for my students to be able to check out books on their own device. This feature, while not currently present, is a work in progress for the next update.
I am hoping to use Book Retriever within my school environment to further my fellow teacher's limited access to books. With a program like Book Retriever, the large number of books we found locked away in storage could be resurrected, organized and put into circulation in our classrooms with relatively little time and effort.
Until then, my books have found a safe and happy home both online and off.
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