So, my friends and I are starting an LGTBQ-specific library for our local area. I don't want to pay the fees for a professionally written app. To that end, I'm designing my own to keep track of who is borrowing what. It's a desktop app; I hope to move it to the cloud and get the app onto phones, but I don't currently know how to do that - yet.
Anyway, the patrons are keyed by their library card number - bar coded - and of course, it's unique. Easy.
I didn't consider the possibilities, and I chose to key the books by ISBN... since they all have a handy barcode. When I was scanning in the books belonging to a friend, I realized that one of her books is the same as one of mine. Obviously, I need to keep track of them separately.
Here's the question: how to real libraries do this? Do they ignore it, only tracking who has one of the copies of a given book, or something more inventive? Does anyone have any insight?
One way I could handle this is to force it to be unique, and re-barcode the dupes. That seems like the path of resistance.