Retrieving Book Information Automatically (Lookup Info)

The app can lookup up common fields for you automatically from the internet


How Does It Work?

We have a database of info on our servers (which you can now upload to as well)

And we have a set of external sources which provide details from a barcode

These are split into standard sources (most information) and older/rare barcode sources

We check each source in order, looking for missing details

and will stop looking when we have found all possible details

We also have some sources which only provide images

You can also choose how to find information, by ISBN or by title or either
Note that less or inaccurate information may be returned when searching by title, if the title is used for multiple Books
lookup method


Details From Around The World?

Data is sourced from around the world, and searched in the most likely order to return good details

You can change the order in which it searches from the Settings


Why Does It Fail Sometimes?

There are various reasons why a lookup fails, here are the usual reasons:

No internet connection


Check your connection, wifi is better (and faster)

Some details returned, not all?


Use the Full Search option (set as default in the Settings Screen)
Or expand your search locations in Settings
This can also occur with a bad internet connection
Some (rarer or older) barcodes do not have a complete set of information to be retrieved
this usually includes classification, description, format, Publisher
(note that characters are only looked up in the Comic Shelf App)


I'm only getting an Image, nothing else?


This usually means we don't have an internet source for details for the barcode,
but we do have one for the image, report it here and we can usually find a new details source


It works later, but not always first time

This is usually caused by overloading the lookup sources during lots of lookups on the Books Screen,
We can't do too much about this, but a lookup from the Edit Details Screen normally works all the time



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