multiple copies

Hello,
I noticed that the thread on multiple copies in TinyCat was from 2021.
Has anything changed/been updated regarding having multiple copies of a title we want to circulate?
I am in my 30 day trial and trying to decide on whether this platform will work for our small Tribal Library (

>1 JTSKTribalLibrary: Not sure what it says in that thread, but if you want to to circulate multiple copies of the same book, you need to enter each separately so that they can be checked in and out separately. If say you have 5 copies, you'll enter each individually, they'll be under the same work, but each with its own barcode if that is what you're using.

Can you please tell me how to enter it under a different barcode? This is quite confusing. We have multiple people contributing books so when they upload their books, they become instantly amalgamated together and so we'd have to figure out how to separate them all? This seems very cumbersome. Is there no way to have a drop down menu to simply say "3 copies"?

>3 Matosschool: There's a dropdown menu to simply say 3 copies, but if you want them to have different barcodes and circulate them individually, you have to make 3 separate entries, rather than use that. Each entry is tied to one barcode. Those 3 entries will appear under the same work, but as individual copies. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks, this sounds promising.
Where's the dropdown menu?
How do I do the different barcode?
Is there a way to do the barcodes efficiently - like when the books are imported, to assign a particular added number to the books of a particular person so that they're automatically considered as different books?

>5 Matosschool: I haven't handled barcodes since I don't need them, so can't help there, but take a look here if it helps https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/CueCat:_Creating_Barcodes

If you're library who will check out these books, you don't want to use the drop down and just increase the number of copies. They'd be a single entry then with a single barcode, not 3 separate ones. If you have 3 books, you enter it 3 times, even if it's the exact same edition. That way, they can have 3 different barcodes. How are you entering the books? One by one, or through one of the import options? It might help give more specific tips. Eg, if using universal import and you have 3 copies of the same book, you'd list it 3 times.

What we have is multiple people adding their books to the list and we'll have a number of duplicates. We'd like everyone's duplicate to show up. So people will be doing universal imports with their lists of books, importing duplicates that others already have. Trying to figure out how to separate them from the beginning without having to go through each book individually.
We don't need to print the barcodes (I don't think). Just looking to separate them the way you said, in the (hopefully) simplest possible way so that if we have 5 copies, all 5 can be leant out to different people.
Can we just make up our own barcodes?

Duplicates are not automatically combined but there might be an import option to not add duplicate books. I don't know though since I don't use that feature

I added them using the "tab-delineated" feature and not adding duplicates wasn't an option. It was for the other ones, but the other imports didn't bring in a huge number of my books so I gave up on them quickly.
However, although not all of them were automatically combined, the process appears completely random. I don't know how to make these features work in my favour without adding a whole host of work trying to separate out the books after the fact.

What I'd like: is every book to be imported separately and then we can go through and delete things as needed. Much easier to delete extras than add books that are missing (how will I know which ones are missing?)

I have no idea what you mean by "automatically combined" in the context of adding books to your library. Books are combined into works but works are at a higher level and don't exist in libraries.

I don't know what you mean by "works" and how they can be a higher level and not exist in libraries...
By "automatically combined" I mean that the multiple copies disappear. If I add "Atlas shrugged" and a friend adds it, there aren't two copies, there is just one on LibraryThing. But we would need there to be two because there are two in reality. Apart from going through each work individually and adding bar codes, is there a way to delineate them automatically?

You might want to be aware of https://www.librarything.com/stats/Matosschool/workdups

(charts and graphs>odds and ends>work duplicates)

This not only tells you what books you have duplicate copies of, but also what books got wrongly combined. I sorted out Wildlife of the World and turned it into a series this morning. The autocombiner tries hard, and usually does a fairly good job, but it only looks at 20 characters or until colon, which ever comes first. (It's best not to include a series name as the beginning of a title.)

>12 MarthaJeanne: He's not talking about the autocombiner. He's talking about duplicate books not being added to his library. I don't know what would cause that but it's not because they're being combined and the use of that term is just causing confusion

But some of the duplicates are being entered.

Perhaps, but it still has nothing to do with combining. The OP is only talking about the books in his library not works.

>12 MarthaJeanne:
Thank you! That's actually quite helpful. Like the other poster was saying, not exactly what I'm looking for, but all these little ways to figure out what's going on and how to control it useful to me.