Xanthi Public Library: online catalog & automatic sync

The library had its entire collection recorded in an internal desktop program. To put a catalog online, someone would have had to re-enter every book a second time by hand, then maintain it forever. At two minutes a book, that’s roughly 1,400 hours: eight months of one person’s work.

I built the public catalog, where people search for books and place holds, and a system that keeps it in sync automatically from the library’s internal software. It carries over titles, authors, translators, publishers, subjects and cover images. It reads the notes library staff write and works out which books have been withdrawn or lost, so they stop showing as available. Every run only touches what actually changed.

Over 2,000 withdrawn or lost books were caught and removed this way, without anyone chasing them down one by one.

No duplicate entries. The online catalog reflects what’s actually on the shelves, and the library’s own staff run it themselves, in Greek, without needing me.

Delivered through my previous company, Codebase O.E.