Booklister Helper

Booklister Helper is a small, free browser extension that captures titles from your library's online catalog 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.

Today the Helper supports library catalogs powered by BiblioCommons, the software platform behind many North American public-library catalogs. Support for additional catalog systems is on the roadmap and will be added based on what libraries ask for most.

Catalogs the Helper supports today

BiblioCommons is the only catalog system the Helper currently works with. The easiest way to tell whether your library 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 runs on a different catalog system (Aspen Discovery, Vega, Polaris LEAP, Encore, Sierra OPAC, BiblioCore, and so on), the Helper can't capture from it today. Drop a note from the contact page and let me know what your library uses. Demand for a specific platform is what drives which one I prioritize next.

Install

Booklister Helper is live on the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons, and Microsoft Edge Add-ons. Install it from the store for your browser:

• Chrome Web Store (also works in Brave, Arc, and other Chromium-based browsers)
• Firefox Add-ons
• Microsoft Edge Add-ons

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, or right-click anywhere on the page and pick Capture for Booklister. A small popup opens with a preview of the title.
3. Click Capture this title. One row lands on your clipboard.
4. Paste into Booklister's Quick Add → Multiple titles tab and press Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to add the title.

Multiple titles from a curated list

This workflow targets the Lists feature in your catalog, 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/. (When the Helper adds support for other catalog systems, list capture will look for the equivalent construct on each one.)

1. Open any catalog list page: a staff-published list, your own list, or any patron's public list.
2. Click the Booklister Helper toolbar icon, or right-click anywhere on the page and pick Capture for Booklister. 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 curated 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 capture 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 as an alternative

Every workflow above lets you start from the toolbar icon or from a right-click anywhere on the catalog page (pick Capture for Booklister from the menu). Both paths open the same popup, so use whichever is faster from where your cursor already is. The menu item only appears on supported catalog pages, so it doesn't clutter your right-click menu anywhere else.

A note for Firefox users

In Booklister's Quick Add tool, the Paste from clipboard button shows a small grey Paste confirmation you have to click before the rows come in. That extra click is Firefox's own clipboard security prompt, not a Booklister step, and websites can't skip it. Chrome reads the clipboard without it. Either way, you can always paste manually with Cmd/Ctrl+V into the paste box instead.

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. On BiblioCommons catalogs, it defaults to the catalog'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. (Other catalog systems may handle local-branch detection differently when the Helper adds support for them; specifics will land on this page as each is added.)

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 the catalog domains it's been built to support (BiblioCommons today, more in the future). 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.