Getting Started with Libraries

Set up your first library in four short steps — create the library, add categories, add your items, and (optionally) apply barcodes.

Required Access

Library Admin — Admin

The Mosaic library module lets you manage any collection of items that people check in and out. A typical school has one main library (books that students and other patrons borrow), plus as many classroom libraries or lending resource sets as you want. A library doesn’t have to hold books — it can just as easily track technology devices like laptops and tablets, sports uniforms, musical instruments, or any other loanable items.

This guide walks you through the four steps needed to get a brand-new library ready for circulation.

Importing an existing catalog

If you already have your library catalog in another system, you don’t need to re-enter everything into Mosaic by hand. Email us at support@mosaicsms.com with a copy of your existing catalog and we’ll help you import it directly — sets, items, barcodes, and metadata all at once.

Step 1: Create a library

Go to Library in the main nav. If your account has the Library Admin privilege, you’ll see a New Library button in the top-right corner.

Click it and fill in the basics:

• Name — e.g., Main Library, Mrs. Smith’s Classroom, PE Uniforms.
• Description — optional, but useful if you have several libraries.
• Location — pick the room from the classrooms list.

When you click Save, Mosaic creates the library and drops you onto its home page. You’ll notice the dashboard isn’t fully populated yet — that’s expected. Mosaic will guide you through the remaining steps with inline alerts.

Plan before you create

Before clicking New Library, take a minute to decide how many libraries you actually need. A single main library is usually enough for whole-school book collections. Separate classroom libraries or resource sets make sense when different staff members are responsible for them or when the lending rules are different (e.g., books can leave the building but laptops can’t).

Step 2: Create your categories

Every library needs at least one category before you can add items. Categories organize your library’s collection into logical groups so patrons and staff can find things quickly. They also let you set different due-day and fee rules for different kinds of items.

What categories you create depends on the size and purpose of the library:

• A larger school library might split its collection into several categories — for example, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Reference, Preschool, and High School.
• A classroom library or resource set often needs just one default category — for example, Books or Sports Uniforms. You can always add more later.

To add categories, click Settings on the library home page and open the Categories tab. Click the + button and fill in:

• Code — a short three- to five-letter abbreviation (e.g., FIC, REF, UNI).
• Name — the full, human-readable label (e.g., Fiction, Reference, Uniforms).

You can ignore the late fee and replacement fee fields for now — they’re optional, and you can configure them later once you’ve decided on your lending policies.

Categories aren’t created automatically

Mosaic does not create any default categories for you. Even a library that will only ever have one category still needs that category created manually before you can add items.

Step 3: Add your first sets and items

Once you have at least one category, head back to the library home page and click Create Set. Mosaic’s set wizard walks you through adding a new entry to your library.

Before you start, it helps to understand two terms Mosaic uses:

• A set holds the shared details for something in your library — title, author, description, cover image, and so on. One set represents one title or product, not a single physical copy.
• An item is an individual physical copy that belongs to a set. Each item has its own unique barcode and its own checkout history. If you have three copies of Charlotte’s Web, you’ll have one set and three items underneath it.

The set wizard supports two paths:

Path A: Books with ISBN (lookup online)

For published books with an ISBN, you can let Mosaic do the heavy lifting. Type or scan the ISBN, or search by title and author, and Mosaic will query online book databases to pre-fill the title, author, description, Dewey decimal code, publisher, and often a cover thumbnail. Review the result, pick a category, tell Mosaic how many copies you have, and save. The set and its items are created in one go.

Path B: Non-ISBN items or non-book collections

For items without an ISBN — older books missing their code, sports uniforms, classroom technology, and so on — switch to Create from Scratch on the first step of the wizard. You’ll enter the details manually. At minimum you need to pick a category and give the item a title. The rest of the metadata fields are optional and depend on what you’ve enabled in Settings → Fields for this library.

Start small

You don’t need to add your entire collection before you start circulating items. Create a handful of sets to get comfortable with the workflow, then build out the rest over time. Mosaic’s Set view has a Copies tab where you can add more physical copies to an existing set whenever new arrivals come in.

Step 4: Barcode your items

We strongly recommend giving each item its own unique barcode. Barcodes make checkout and checkin fast, eliminate typos in item IDs, and scale gracefully as your libraries grow. You don’t actually need a barcode scanner to use barcodes — you can always type the 8-digit number by hand — but a cheap USB scanner turns every transaction into a one-second operation.

Here’s the simplest way to get set up:

1. Go to Library → Reports → Generate Barcodes. Mosaic produces a printable PDF sheet of unique 8-digit barcodes.
2. Print the sheet, cut out the barcodes, and tape each one to the corresponding item. Clear packing tape is more durable than printer labels and tends to hold up better to repeated handling.
3. In Mosaic, open the item you’re labeling (from its set’s Copies tab), click into the empty barcode field, and either scan the barcode or type the 8-digit number. Save.

Once an item has a barcode, it’s ready for circulation. Authorized staff can check it in or out by scanning or typing that barcode into the Fast Checkout form on the library home page or the Check In/Out panel on the item’s set.

Barcodes are optional — but worth it

You can run a library without barcodes if you prefer to search for each item by title when checking in and out. It works, but it’s slower and more error-prone. For anything larger than a very small classroom set, we recommend biting the bullet and barcoding your items up front.

Mark the school’s main library

By default, a library only appears in the My Libraries pager for staff who have been granted permission on it. If you’re setting up the school’s primary book collection, you probably want it to show up for every teacher and staff member without having to add them one by one.

To make a library visible to everyone, open Settings → Overview and set the Main library field to Yes. The library will now appear in every staff member’s My Libraries list alongside the libraries they have explicit permission on. Other libraries — classroom sets, resource collections, and so on — stay in the Other Libraries browse list until a staff member is granted direct access.

Most schools mark exactly one library as the main library, but the field doesn’t enforce that — if you have two school-wide collections (say, an elementary library and a secondary library), you can mark both.

Admin-only setting

Only system-wide Library Admins can toggle the Main library field. Per-library Admins — people who have Admin access to a specific library but not to the module as a whole — will see the field as read-only.

About patrons

You don’t need to create a patron list before you start circulating items. Every active student and staff member is automatically set up as a library patron, so you can check items out to them right away.

Where you do need to do some work is adding anyone who isn’t on your school’s student or staff roster — parents, guardians, alumni, board members, volunteers, or other external community members. Open the Patrons button on the library home page to add or manage these extra patrons. They can be created as brand-new people or linked to existing contact records already in Mosaic.

You’re ready to circulate

With a library created, categories defined, items added, and barcodes applied, you’re ready to start checking items in and out. The full library dashboard will now be visible on the library home page, including the Patrons button, Fast Checkout, Last Checked Out, and the Reports menu.

From here, you may want to explore:

• Library Inventory — how to run a barcode-scanning inventory to find missing items.
• Damaged Books — how to charge patrons for missing, damaged, or unusable items during checkin.
• Library Settings → Options — configure due-day counts, reminders, and late-fee policies for the library.
• Library Settings → Overview — grant other staff members access to the library at the Clerk, Holdings, or Admin level.