Scanning large quantities of barcodes

Ideas
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1

What high-level problem are you trying to solve?
Here is my use case. I have a library with thousands if not tens of thousands of books and I want to make a digital catalog as fast as possible. To do so, my plan is to scan the ISBN numbers of each book as quickly as possible that I would later use to populate a spreadsheet/database with the remaining info of each book. I would like to add an appearance to a barcode question like repeat or CSV, etc.

I would like to press the barcode scan button to be able to open the barcode scanner to scan the first book like I would any other barcode, however, after it recognizes that first ISBN barcode, instead of going back to the form where it shows the text that was scanned, it remains in the camera and it compiles these barcodes as a CSV or Spaced Separated String and so it allows you to continue scanning without any button taps. What is the limit to barcode answers currently? For a single barcode questions, could one scan 10k barcodes that are each about 20 characters long? 100k?

Optionally it could include some helpful buttons on the bottom as well as a counter on the top to know how many barcodes have been scanned. The main thing I could see being problematic is scanning something wrong/duplicate. I think it would be helpful to have some sort of method to scroll through the list of barcodes that have been scanned, and having a trash icon that would trash only the barcode that is selected. This would be ideal, but a simplified version would just let you delete the last scanned item. You would also need to have some sort of Done button somewhere...

Any ideas on how ODK could help you solve it?
Testing it after its been developed.

Upload any helpful links, sketches, and videos.

099a2e4fa2256d91e0e5211ca55e8d82147aabc2
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From a UI standpoint I'd prefer a scrolling display like this one below instead of the number and the 2 buttons on the bottom like I made in the image above, so that you could quickly navigate to the Barcode of interest rather than the previous and next buttons. This would free up space for a "Done" button.

File
File1500×862 24.2 KB

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2

As much as I love to treat ODK as a hammer and every problem like a nail...

Use the app, scan all your books in a flash, review later to confirm the retrieved book data are correct.

Edit to add:
It is extremely common to have >1 barcodes on the back of a book, Librarything will recognise all of them and discard those that aren't ISBNs with a message, and add the book to catalogue for the one that is an ISBN.

I scanned my entire library in 1/2 day, including manually adding books without ISBNs by searching title/author, and adding titles (details, cover image, etc) to the catalogue that didn't previously exist.

Now I scan a book when it enters the house to keep the catalogue up to date. LT has been super helpful in preventing me from buying duplicates as I can search my catalogue while out and about :rofl:

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