S-Lib Assistant
Cataloguing companion for the S-Lib school library system
NoteS-Lib is a third-party library management system. S-Lib Assistant is an independent companion tool and is not affiliated with its vendor.
- Type
- Selected work
- Sector
- Education / School libraries
- Status
- Pre-release 0.6.0
- Role
- Paid project for a school, in progress
- Period
- September 2026 – present
- Scope
- 4 areas
Context
Cataloguing a book in S-Lib (Rel 20201201) means looking up its details and typing many fields by hand. S-Lib stays the official system of record, and it cannot be modified.
The goal is to change the workflow from scan ISBN → search for the book → type every field to scan ISBN → metadata found → preview and edit → fill the S-Lib form in one step → staff check it and press Save.
What it does
- Looks up each ISBN in parallel across five sources (Google Books, Open Library, the Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Crossref as a strict fallback). One source failing does not block the others.
- Keeps the provenance of every field visible. When sources disagree, the record is marked for review rather than resolved silently.
- Queues rapid scans so the current book is never overwritten, and warns about ISBNs that were recently processed.
- Exports a redacted diagnostics bundle for support, without touching S-Lib or patron data.
- Updates itself only from complete, checksum-verified releases, keeping a backup so it can roll back.
Guardrails
- Never writes to the S-Lib database directly.
- Never presses Save. A member of staff always does.
- Never makes up metadata. Empty stays empty.
- Fills a form only after confirming that the correct S-Lib window is open, using a field mapping verified against a real installation.
Status
The Release candidate 0.6.0 is complete and passes its automated tests. Before first use, the field mapping still has to be verified against S-Lib on an office PC.