We have been looking at BookCAT, and are wondering if BookCAT allows downloading information from the Internet by using the book title and/or author? We are pleased with what we have seen so far from the program.

I'm afraid this is not supported. You can only search online with the isbn number.

The Amazon ASIN catalog number for a book can be used in BookCAT to download information for a book by first doing a title/author search on Amazon. I think this method is close to what you want in terms of a title/author search, though it does limit your searching to Amazon's database.

Start by searching Amazon for the title/author of a book you want. If you can find the book, click on the title to open Amazon's Product Page and copy the "ASIN" number from the "Product Details" section. Then paste the ASIN number into BookCAT's "Download From Internet (Add New)" popup. Click on "Search" to let BookCAT get the rest of Amazon's data for the book. Of course you have to include one or more of the Amazon websites in BookCAT's list of sites to be searched for book data, but this can be easily done in BookCAT using the "Tools | Options - Download from Internet" menu.

Here's a sample ASIN number you can use for experimenting. First I did a title/author search on Amazon for an old paperback edition of "Greybeard", by Brian W. Aldiss. In the list of search results I located the edition I wanted, copied the ASIN number, and pasted it into the "Download From Internet (Add New)" popup in BookCAT. Note that there were no ISBN numbers for this book. BookCAT's search results included title, author, publisher, edition, page count, plot synopsis, and cover image - not bad for a title/author search with no ISBN.

B0007E5UTA

In addition to an ISBN and an Amazon ASIN number, BookCAT can use a Library of Congress Catalog Number (LCCN) to search for a book. This number can extremely useful if you have an LCCN for an old book that doesn't have an ISBN. It also may pick up additional info like the old Dewey catalog numbers.

When using the LCCN number of a book for the search, there are a few things you have to remember:

1. The format of an LCCN number may have to be modified in order to make the search work correctly. In particular, dashes in the number should be
replaced with the number 0. e.g., if the LCCN number for a book is 68-10576, replace the dash with 0 and use 68010576 in your search.
2. Occasionally you may get a warning from BookCAT that the LCCN is not a valid ISBN number. Click on "OK" to accept it anyway and do the search.
3. BookCAT won't check the LCCN you've entered to see if the book is already in your database (it does perform this check for ISBN numbers).
4. Obviously you have to include the Library of Congress in your list of sites to be searched when using "Download from Internet (Add new)" to load book data.

Here's an example to see how the search works. I started with an LCCN of 68-10576, replaced "-" with "0", and used this number in the BookCAT "Download
from Internet (Add New)" popup:

68010576

BookCAT found Author, Title, Publisher, Publish Date, Publish Place, Edition, Page Count, LC Call Number (another number used by the Library of Congress, similar in use to Dewey numbers for locating books in holdings), and a note about a previous edition.

The LCCN search isn't quite what you want in terms of a title/author search, but it is another way to use BookCAT for downloading books when your info is limited.

Hope this litany is somehow useful,