Ossus

Public libraries and school libraries run on aging systems and manual processes for cataloguing, inventory, and administrative work. This busywork consumes hours that librarians would otherwise spend on curation, connection, and helping patrons. School librarians in particular are described as needing their time back for students rather than spending it on setup and admin tasks. The site frames this as infrastructural neglect rather than cultural decline, implying the tools libraries use have not kept pace with what is now possible.

Ossus offers a complete integrated library system (ILS) covering catalogue, circulation, and a patron-facing discovery experience, plus a school-focused product called Librar that can set up a library from a phone in minutes. On top of this foundation it adds AI agents: an inventory tool that photographs up to 30 books at a time and identifies them by reading spines to locate misplaced items, a vendor comparison agent that splits purchase orders across vendors to find the cheapest combination of price, MARC records, and processing, and a grant agent that scans sources for eligible grants, tracks deadlines, and drafts applications. A resource manager included in every plan tracks non-book items like Chromebooks, tablets, and instruments with their own checkout history and condition notes. The company states it reads only catalogue metadata, not borrower records, and does not train on or sell customer data. It also offers free data migration from existing systems, typically completed within a few days to three weeks.