BiblioteQ
Cataloging software for personal and small libraries
Description
A few hundred books at home and a couple of boxes of discs, and you want to know whether you already own a title or who borrowed it and never brought it back. A spreadsheet holds up for a while and then falls apart — columns multiply, covers do not fit in a cell, loans end up on a second sheet, and nobody maintains it. BiblioteQ does the job the way a real library does: pull catalog records by ISBN so title, author, publisher, year and cover art fill themselves in, turning a new entry from a dozen typed fields into one number.
It separates holdings by type — books, journals, DVDs, music, video games, photograph collections and grey literature each get their own field template rather than one generic form. Data can live in a local SQLite file for single-user work, or in PostgreSQL for a shared small-library setup with patron records and circulation. BSD licensed, with Windows, macOS and Linux builds.
Fetch records online: queries library catalogs over Z39.50 and SRU, filling title, author, publication details, subject headings and cover art from an ISBN instead of field-by-field typing.
Type-specific cataloging: books, journals, DVDs, music, games, photograph collections and documents each have their own field sets — a DVD records director and region code, an album records its tracks.
Two storage backends: SQLite for a single user with everything in one portable file, or PostgreSQL when several people need the same collection at once.
Circulation: patron records track who borrowed which copy and when, with current loans and history available at any time.
Multiple copies and status: one title can hold several copies, each with its own identifier and status, so duplicates and missing volumes are visible.
Search and filter: combine title, author, ISBN, category and language criteria, with sortable result columns so finding one item in a large collection does not mean paging through it.
Covers and attachments: front and back cover images attach to a record, as do electronic files, keeping the shelf copy and the digital one together.
Export and reports: holdings export to CSV and similar formats for stocktaking or handing off to someone else.
Cross-platform and open source: built on Qt with Windows, macOS and Linux builds under a BSD license, and the data stays in your hands.
It separates holdings by type — books, journals, DVDs, music, video games, photograph collections and grey literature each get their own field template rather than one generic form. Data can live in a local SQLite file for single-user work, or in PostgreSQL for a shared small-library setup with patron records and circulation. BSD licensed, with Windows, macOS and Linux builds.
Features
Fetch records online: queries library catalogs over Z39.50 and SRU, filling title, author, publication details, subject headings and cover art from an ISBN instead of field-by-field typing.
Type-specific cataloging: books, journals, DVDs, music, games, photograph collections and documents each have their own field sets — a DVD records director and region code, an album records its tracks.
Two storage backends: SQLite for a single user with everything in one portable file, or PostgreSQL when several people need the same collection at once.
Circulation: patron records track who borrowed which copy and when, with current loans and history available at any time.
Multiple copies and status: one title can hold several copies, each with its own identifier and status, so duplicates and missing volumes are visible.
Search and filter: combine title, author, ISBN, category and language criteria, with sortable result columns so finding one item in a large collection does not mean paging through it.
Covers and attachments: front and back cover images attach to a record, as do electronic files, keeping the shelf copy and the digital one together.
Export and reports: holdings export to CSV and similar formats for stocktaking or handing off to someone else.
Cross-platform and open source: built on Qt with Windows, macOS and Linux builds under a BSD license, and the data stays in your hands.
