How to run a school library stocktake in Australia
Count the books, find the gaps, keep a record. TitleEntry does the scanning.
Try TitleEntry
Australian school libraries are run by teacher librarians, library technicians and, in smaller schools, whoever has the time. Libraries are not mandated in Australian schools, and there are no national reporting requirements, so a stocktake is the school’s own job and often a once-a-year one. This page covers how to do it quickly. For the general guide, see school library inventory.
A school library stocktake in four steps
Scan what is on the shelves
Scan each barcode with a phone or USB scanner, or photograph a shelf and let the AI shelf scanner read the spines. Books without barcodes are picked up from the spine text. Everything lands in one list, ready to check against your last stocktake.
Tag each book with its shelf
Name each shelf or collection before you scan it, so every book is recorded against where it sits. Moving a book to another shelf later is one edit, not a re-scan.
Check the list against your records
The catalogue shows what is physically on the shelves. Compare it with your last stocktake, mark missing titles, and pull duplicates and worn copies. Duplicate copies are detected when you save, and you choose whether to update quantities, skip them or save them as new.
Export the record
Export the stocktake to Excel to file with your records or share with the principal. It opens in Excel or Google Sheets.
Guides for other countries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland. Read more about the AI bookshelf scanner and ISBN scanning.
Australian books scan like any other
Thorpe-Bowker is the ISBN Agency for Australia, so the barcode on an Australian book is a standard ISBN and scans like any other. TitleEntry looks the book up and fills in the record. Where no source has a title, add it by hand.
Primary, secondary or K-12
Name each library, classroom collection or year-level shelf as its own location. A K-12 school with a junior and a senior library can keep both in one catalogue and see where every book is.
Honest about what TitleEntry is and is not
TitleEntry is a cataloguing and export tool. It is not a library management system: no loans, no student accounts, no overdue tracking and no public catalogue. See our guide to book cataloguing software for how the options compare.
If your school already has a system, use the export to check it against what is on the shelves. If it has none, TitleEntry builds the catalogue from scratch. The Australian School Library Association is the national body for school libraries and sets national standards; TitleEntry only handles the catalogue.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Thorpe-Bowker is the ISBN Agency for Australia, and the barcode on an Australian book is a standard ISBN. TitleEntry looks it up and fills in the record. Books no source holds can be added by hand.
No. Libraries are not currently mandated in Australian schools, and there are no national reporting requirements, so what a school keeps and checks is the school’s decision.
Scan every book, record the shelf it sits on, then compare the list against your previous records. Barcode scanning handles books with an ISBN. For older books without one, photograph the shelf and the AI shelf scanner reads the spines.
No. It catalogues and exports, with no loans, student accounts or public catalogue. If your school already has a system, use the export to check it against the shelves. If not, the catalogue and spreadsheet can be your record.
Get in touch and we will talk through your collections and set you up.
Last verified 6 October 2026. Sources: Thorpe-Bowker, Australian ISBN Agency; Australian School Library Association; Australia Reads, why we need support for school libraries.