The ten-minute setup

You don’t need to set everything up before you start. BeeShelf works out of the box, and you can tune the details later. Here’s the fastest path from an empty library to a working one.

1. Sign in and catalog a few books

Open app.beeshelf.com/login and sign in with your email and password. BeeShelf checks your credentials across every library and routes you straight to your Staff Console. (Your library’s own door, your-library.beeshelf.com/staff, still works.)

A brand-new library lands on Set up your library, a short guided wizard at /staff/setup. It walks you through the two steps that matter most, your brand colour and your first books, and you can skip it any time. To catalogue by hand, go to the Catalog tab and choose Add books, headed “Add to your shelves.”

Pick a book with a barcode, type or scan its ISBN into the box, and press Enter. In a second or two you’ll see the cover, title, author, and a summary. Press Add to catalog. Do it a few more times. Each book you add pushes up the titles and copies in your library counts in the top right of the Add books screen.

This is the heart of BeeShelf, and it’s covered in full in Adding books by scanning.

2. Add a member

Go to the Members tab. In the Add a member panel on the right, type a name and press Add member. That’s the minimum. You can add an email, a card number, and a category now or later.

More on this in Managing members.

3. Lend a book

Go to the Circulation tab. With Check out selected, type the member’s name and press Find. (If they have a card, you can scan or type its number instead.) Then search the book by title or author and press Lend on an available copy. If your copies are labelled, scanning the barcode is the fast path. You’ll see an instant confirmation with the due date.

That’s a working library: books catalogued, a member, and a loan. Full detail is in Checking books out and in.

4. Make it yours (optional)

When you have a moment, go to Settings and:

• Set your library name and brand colour. One colour re-skins the whole app, including the reader app. See Branding.
• Adjust the lending rules (loan length, renewals, fines). See Lending rules.

New libraries start private and set to approval, so readers sign in to browse, and each self sign-up waits for a librarian under Members → Awaiting approval. Readers also verify their email address before they can place holds or check out to themselves; signing in with Google does that automatically. Change either default in Settings, under your catalogue’s visibility and “How readers join”. Members you add yourself, as in step 2, can borrow at the desk right away.