For schools, NGOs, companies & community libraries
Your Library
Management System
BeeShelf is a modern library management system (ILS) for people who run libraries without an IT department. Scan a barcode and the full record appears in about two seconds. Lending takes a tap. The catalogue keeps itself tidy, and your readers get shelves worth exploring.
Free to start. No card, no sales call. Your data stays yours and exports any day you ask.
A real record, built from one scan in about two seconds.
Why we built it
A library isn't a place that lends books. It's a place that helps people become readers, and keeps what a community knows within reach.
Most library software was built for the lending desk: fines, forms, and a catalogue only a cataloguer could love. BeeShelf starts from the other end. Make the collection easy to build, easy to run, and genuinely pleasant to browse, and the lending part takes care of itself.
Cataloguing
From a pile of new books to a catalogued shelf, in an afternoon.
Scan a barcode with your phone and the full record is there: cover, author, publisher summary, subjects, a suggested shelf. No barcode? Photograph the cover and BeeShelf reads the title and finds the book. No MARC training, no copy-typing.
- Real catalogue data first, from the sources librarians already trust. Nothing is invented.
- The first time any BeeShelf library scans a book, every library gets that record. Cataloguing gets faster as more shelves join.
- Clean records land approved. Doubtful ones wait in a review pile, so you never babysit the easy ones.
AI, on a short leash
A catalogue that tidies itself.
Imports and donations arrive with messy records: duplicate subjects, missing summaries, the odd field in German. BeeShelf's optional AI fills only the gaps a publisher left, labels everything it writes, and never touches a field a librarian typed.
- Missing descriptions written in and badged as AI-suggested until you approve them.
- Noisy vendor subjects are filtered out of search and the discovery map, so readers see clean topics.
- Your edits are protected. A human record always outranks a generated one.
BeeShelf Discovery
Your collection, laid out like a night sky.
Every book becomes a star, drawn toward the books it belongs near. Readers drift through the constellations, something catches their eye, they tap it and borrow. It's the closest thing on a screen to browsing a good shelf, and it comes with every BeeShelf library.
Because you loved Tomorrow's Tide
- The Salt Road N. Okri shoreline, memory
- Migrations C. McConaghy sea, longing, climate
- A Tale for the Time Being R. Ozeki tides, memory
- The Old Drift N. Serpell place across time
The same list a screen reader gets. The sky is the view; the ranking is the truth underneath it.
Drag to look around. Tap any book to see why it sits where it sits.
Circulation
Lending so simple it disappears.
Check-out runs from a phone in the middle of the room: find the member by name, the book by title, done. Scanning stays the fast path if you have barcodes. Holds, renewals, due dates and overdue nudges run themselves.
- Check out by name and title, or scan a card and a spine. Both take seconds.
- Due-soon and overdue emails go out on their own. You stop being the reminder.
- Fine-free if that's your policy. It's a setting, not a special request.
Migrate in minutes
Switch from Libib, Koha, a spreadsheet, or any ILS.
Bring your whole library across without re-typing it. Import the catalogue from a CSV or MARC file and your borrowers from a class roster. BeeShelf dedupes as it goes and fills in covers and subjects, so a migrated shelf looks complete on day one.
- Catalogue import: CSV (Libib or any spreadsheet export) and MARC, both .mrc and MARCXML, including Koha item records.
- Members arrive from a single roster CSV.
- Dedup-safe and re-runnable, with covers and subjects filled in for every ISBN.
The rest of the job
Everything else a library day throws at you.
Requests, stocktake, reports, member imports, privacy controls, your own brand. The features page has the full picture.
Who it's for
From a shelf of 10 books to a university with 10,000,000
Schools
Run the school library without an IT department or a budget for one.
Universities and Colleges
Real cataloguing standards when you want them, hidden when you don't.
Corporate Organisations
Keep what your organisation knows findable instead of forgotten.
NGOs & Community
Nearly free, nearly self-explanatory, forgiving of a shaky connection.
Also from BeeShelf
Running a book club? We built that too.
A free tool for book clubs: pick the next read together, set the meeting, and keep a shelf of everything you have read. Your members join in seconds from one link, and the conversation stays in your group chat.
Catalogue your first shelf today.
Free to start, no card, no sales call. If you can scan a barcode, you're most of the way there.