Booklister Helper

Booklister Helper is a small, free browser extension for library catalogs powered by BiblioCommons. If your library is on a BiblioCommons catalog, the extension lets you capture titles straight into Booklister: open a title's record page in your catalog, click the extension icon, and the title, author, call number, and cover image all land on your clipboard, ready to paste into Booklister's Quick Add. No retyping, no copy-paste juggling, no hunting for cover images.

How to tell if your library uses BiblioCommons

BiblioCommons is a software platform many North American public libraries use as the front-end of their catalog. The easiest way to tell whether yours uses it: open any title's record page on your library's catalog and look at the URL. If it contains bibliocommons.com, you're good to go.

If your library is on a different catalog system, drop a note from the contact page and let me know what your library uses. If there's enough interest in a specific platform, I may build a separate extension or adapter for it in the future.

Install

Booklister Helper is being submitted to the major browser extension stores. Install links will appear here as each store approves the listing.

• Chrome Web Store (link coming soon)
• Firefox Add-ons (link coming soon)
• Microsoft Edge Add-ons (link coming soon)

Once installed, you'll see a small Booklister Helper icon in your browser's toolbar. That icon is the button you click on a catalog page to capture a title.

Need it for a different browser? Send a note from the contact page. If there's enough interest in a specific browser, I may add it.

How to use it

Three ways to capture, depending on what you're doing:

One title at a time

1. Open a title's record page in your library catalog.
2. Click the Booklister Helper icon in your browser toolbar.
3. One row lands on your clipboard. Paste into Booklister's Quick Add → Multiple titles tab and press Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to add the title.

Multiple titles from a BiblioCommons list

This workflow targets BiblioCommons's built-in Lists feature, the one where library staff publish staff picks, themed reading lists, and seasonal recommendations, and where patrons build their own reading lists. In a BiblioCommons catalog you typically find these under nav links and headings like Lists, Staff Picks, Featured Lists, Recommended Lists, or My Lists. The URL of an individual list page contains /v2/list/.

1. Open any BiblioCommons list page: a staff-published list, your own list, or any patron's public list.
2. Click the Booklister Helper toolbar icon. A small popup opens showing every title on the list with a cover thumbnail and a checkbox.
3. Pick the titles you want. All titles are checked by default. Use the All, None, and First N controls (the First N selector picks 13, 14, or 15) for quick presets, or check and uncheck individual rows.
4. Click Capture N titles. The extension takes about five to ten seconds for thirteen titles while it fetches the right call number and cover for each one.
5. A multi-row TSV lands on your clipboard. Paste into Booklister and submit.

This is the fastest workflow when you're starting a Booklister booklist from an existing BiblioCommons list, since most published lists run longer than the 13-15 slots on a Booklister booklist. Picking the subset in the catalog is faster than trimming inside Booklister.

Running list while you browse

If you'd rather collect titles one at a time as you browse, turn on Accumulate captures in the extension's settings. Then each toolbar click appends to a running list instead of overwriting the clipboard, and the toolbar badge shows how many titles you've staged. Paste into Booklister whenever you have enough. Right-click the toolbar icon and pick Clear accumulated list to start over.

Right-click access

On any supported catalog page, you can right-click anywhere on the page and pick Capture for Booklister from the menu instead of clicking the toolbar icon. On a record page it captures that title. On a list page it opens the same selection popup as a left-click on the toolbar icon. The menu item only appears on BiblioCommons record and list pages, so it doesn't clutter your right-click menu anywhere else.

Branch selection (consortium catalogs)

If your library shares a catalog with other libraries in a consortium, the same title often has different call numbers across the participating libraries, and the extension has to pick one. By default it uses BiblioCommons's own "your local branch" detection, which works automatically when you're signed in to your library account or browsing from your library's IP range. So on a work computer at the library, you usually don't have to do anything.

If you'd rather pin a specific branch (useful for outreach booklists, school visits, or pop-up displays at a specific location), set the Preferred branch field in the extension's options to a substring of your branch name as it appears in the catalog's Availability table.

If your library runs its own standalone catalog with consistent call numbers, this section doesn't apply. The extension just uses the call number on the title's record page.

What the extension does not do

• Doesn't send anything to me or to any server I control. The captured row goes from the catalog page straight to your clipboard, locally, in your browser. I never see what you capture.
• Doesn't run on any site other than your library catalog. The extension only has permission to read pages on BiblioCommons-powered library catalog domains. It has no permission to read anything you browse on other websites and never will.
• Doesn't track you. No analytics, no telemetry, no usage logging.
• Doesn't load any code from the internet. The extension ships as a fixed bundle of files and runs entirely from your computer once installed. It can't be updated or changed remotely without a new store-approved release that you decide whether to accept.
• Doesn't use cookies or accounts. No sign-in, no profile, no settings stored anywhere except locally in your browser.

The privacy story for the rest of Booklister is covered in the privacy policy.

Questions or feedback

If something stops working (catalogs occasionally redesign their software and the extension may need a small update to catch up), or if you have feature requests, drop a note from the contact page.