Sneak Preview: CLZ Books 10.0 – Add books by reading ISBN numbers with OCR

Books CLZ Books Mobile
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A big v10.0 update is coming up for your CLZ Books app within 2 weeks, so here’s a Sneak Preview!

CLZ Book 10.0 will bring a vast improvement to the Add Books by ISBN feature! Previously the scan screen could only scan ISBN barcodes, but v10 will also “read” ISBN numbers that are printed on the book using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Reading ISBN numbers with OCR will be super useful for:

  • older books without barcodes
  • books where the barcode on the book is not an ISBN barcode but a UPC barcode

Here’s a sneak preview of the new Add by ISBN scan screen. In the screenshot on the left, it is reading an ISBN printed on the inside of the book. On the right, a screenshot of the app detection both the ISBN barcode AND the ISBN10 that is printed above the barcode.

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But that is not the only improvement to the Add by ISBN feature. Here’s what will be new in v10:

  • Read ISBN numbers using OCR
  • Visual scanning feedback on the camera screen. A red scan line where it “sees” a barcode, a green box where it “sees” an ISBN number.
  • Now recognizes ISBNs on entire camera screen, not only in center area. Just point your camera in the general direction of the book and it will pick up the ISBN on screen.
  • Faster ISBN recognition, faster online lookups and faster adding to queue.

See it in action here, demonstrated by CLZ AJ:

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good updates but I am still waiting to be able to as ISBN by voice.

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Can you explain the use case for that?

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Maybe I am thinking of a different site. But when adding a book by ISBN, there is a keyboard symbol. Here all I get is a 10-key keypad and not the keyboard promised. So it is hard to put in ISBNs with an “X”. Second there is not a microphone symbol on the keyboard so you can not enter the IBSN by voice. It is more convenient to hold the book and read the ISBN instead of holding a phone and aiming or in some cases the ISBN is not in the book itself.
Thank you for asking.

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I recommend to check on that first, before posting here.
Our CLZ Books app DOES have an X on the keyboard.

I recommend waiting for v10 before making that judgement.

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found the x -thank you
I will wait for version 10

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I like the ability to read the numbers and not just the barcode. Are there any plans to bring that functionality to the CLZ Scanner app? I typically add books to my library on my computer and not my phone. so being able to read the numbers using the Scanner app to send the ISBN from my phone to my computer would be great!

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Yes, definitely, that is at the top of our to-do list at the moment. Coming up within a few weeks.

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