Using iPhone or iPad for scanning barcodes

Is there a way to use the iPhone or iPad camera for scanning barcodes for loans and returns? I know I can use it for grabbing data using the LibraryThing app

Unfortunately, we don't have a built-in mobile scanner for TinyCat usage at this time. Sorry for the trouble. It is something we're looking into (to see if we can do it, technically), and I'll update this thread when we have more information on that end (it won't happen immediately, so thanks in advance for your patience).

No worries Kristi - the interesting thing tho is that my phone camera can act as a barcode reader already when i add a new item using the LibraryThing App. I wonder why i cannot use the same principles to read the barcodes on the LibraryThingApp when i am checking for titles already in my collection. But if this is complicated and will take some time i can wait. Thanks again

Yeah, the LT App is different from TinyCat. The approach to accomplish this is different, too, I believe (which is why we need to see if we can actually get mobile scanning the way we want it on TC), but I'll update this thread when I get an update from developers. Thanks!

SAIGONSTAR, you can use any good QR-code-scanning app to link to the books page in tinycat.

If it is only you or your staff who will use this, there are apps that allow you to prepend a pre-configured static part of the link (eg: http://librarycat.org/lib/yourlibrary/search/text/ ) and then just append the scanned barcode, which will take you to the book's page. This will even work with the ISBN-labels of the book, unless you have multiple copies.

If other users (your patrons) are going to use it, it may be easier to print QR-code-labels that can contain the whole link. I just described the procedure here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/305706#6806468

Hi Ellen,
Thanks so much for working out an amazing solution. Sorry i just got to see this but i will try it out.

BTW, how did you generate the barcodes in your excel file that you shared? What sort of software did you use? Thanks