Adding books to your Library

Church Social users with Administrator or Librarian access to your account are able to add and update the records for your books and library resources.

Manually adding library resources

Books and library resources can easily be added to Church Social using the Create item button located in the top right corner of the Library page.

Importing library resources

Church Social supports the import of library records from your existing library catalogue. You can import 1,000 records at a time using an Excel or CSV file. The data must be in the format specified in the template file we provide.  Further information on the types of data fields available and their requirements is covered in our documentation. 

The import tool checks your data as the first step in the import wizard and then reports on any errors detected.  This means that you are able to upload your import file and view any possible import errors before actually importing your data.  

If you are moving from older library management software  to Church Social, most library systems allow you to export your existing books in CSV or MARC format.  If your data is only available in MARC format we are able to convert those records to Excel for the import. Please contact support@churchsocial.com for details.

Adding Cover Images

Church Social supports the addition of cover images for your library books, CDs and other library resources.  These can be added manually or retrieved automatically.  Whenever you create, import, or update an item in the library section, Church Social will automatically try and load a cover image for it from the openlibrary.org database if a cover image does not already exist. 

For the automated cover image retrieval to work your library resource must have an ISBN number entered into Church Social.  

Import batches of library resources

If you are adding large batches of books we can share a technique which uses LibraryThing to scan your books to a mobile app and then import them into Church Social.  Please contact support@churchsocial.com for further details.