Home library cataloging software

On 6/20/06 18:06, "Robert Pyle" <rpylepost.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Upon starting yet another "I've got to get organized!" push this
> morning, I discovered not one, but *three* books that I've bought two
> copies of. If I had all my books neatly cataloged, I could check
> before ordering that I don't already have one. (The question then
> would become, "Okay, but where is it?", which might be easier to
> answer.)
>
> Can anyone recommend ready-made Mac software for this task?

Delicious Library, <http://www.delicious-monster.com/>

fantastic app

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

> Upon starting yet another "I've got to get organized!" push this
> morning, I discovered not one, but *three* books that I've bought two
> copies of. If I had all my books neatly cataloged, I could check
> before ordering that I don't already have one. (The question then
> would become, "Okay, but where is it?", which might be easier to
> answer.)
>
> Can anyone recommend ready-made Mac software for this task?

I had a similar problem, so I looked into library software a year or
so back.

The key features I wanted were:

1. Easy data entry. I was just not going to enter any substantial
amount of info by hand.

2. Easy location/borrower tracking. My library is split between my
office and home, and I do need to keep track of books loaned out.

3. Valuation. My home insurance agent didn't believe that I had tens
of thousands of dollars worth of "ordinary" books at home which would
need to get replaced in the event of an catastrophe, until I produced
a list with current Amazon prices.

4. Nice to haves: iPod export (to have my catalog when I'm browsing
at a bookstore). Endnote or BibTeX export.

There are three major alternatives:
Delicious Library (www.delicious-monster.com)
Bookpedia (www.bruji.com)
Readerware (www.readerware.com)

When I made my decision a little over a year ago, Delicious Library
came out on top. Back then, DL was the only one with the iSight
barcode reader (reason 1). That alone was almost enough to clinch it
(and they certainly did get a lot of press for it). It does pretty
reliable Amazon lookups (not just US but 5 other countries Amazon)
and did 2 and 3 pretty well. It does iPod exports, which is nice.
And the "bookshelf" view which shows you a virtual bookshelf with the
book covers facing out is very slick.

If I were choosing today, I might give Bookpedia the nod instead.
The problem with DL is that it has stood still in terms of features,
while the competition has caught up. Bookpedia now offers similar
iSight barcode reading. And most of DL's key features (including
iPod exprt) are there. In addition, Bookpedia offers lookups from
the Library of Congress, and other databases (not just Amazon like
DL) vastly improving the likelihood of a successful lookup
(especially if you have out of print or foreign press books), and it
also exports to BibTeX files.

The slick "bookshelf" view is not particularly useful once your
library starts getting into the hundreds.

I don't think I will switch since the incremental feature gain is not
worth the hassle of exporting the data from DL, but IMHO Bookpedia
now gives DL a serious run for its money.

Readerware is a slightly different beast. It's a Java program, and
offers a much more flexible and extensive internet lookup facility.
Because it's a Java program it's a bit sluggish and the interface
doesn't look very mac-like. But there are versions available for
Windows and Linux (as well as a client for the Palm), and it
generates cross platform files. If the better lookup or cross-
platform capabilities is important to you, this would be your choice.

Hope this helps.

Tomoharu

I use Delicious Library and am ecstatic with it. With an iSight
camera, I can scan the barcodes directly into the library. It draws
in information from Amazon's huge database (including cover images),
has a robust search function, allows you to set up sub-categories (by
topic, etc.), and handles CDs, games, cassettes and more. Plus it's
cheap.

I'm also using the online service reader2.com, which combines a book
inventory with a social "service", letting you see which other
reader2.com users are reading the same books and it lets you peruse
their lists in search of even more books to buy and catalogue. It
even makes suggestions about what you might want to read next. When
you enter a book title, you can add tags, write a description or
review, and choose some other metadata (whether you've read the book
or not, whether you own it or borrowed it, etc.)

I haven't put my full library on reader2.com; I'm using it to keep
track of all the books I read this year, as I read them.

Mark Hamilton

--- "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com> wrote:

> On 6/20/06 18:06, "Robert Pyle"
> <rpylepost.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> > Upon starting yet another "I've got to get
> organized!" push this
> > morning, I discovered not one, but *three* books
> that I've bought two
> > copies of.

John,

You can list those extra books for sale on Amazon.com.
It's really easy to do--just type in the ISBN no. and
Amazon supplies all the other info about the book. I
listed about 200 books I could do without and sold
only a few, but it brought in around $400 over about 6
weeks.

Amazon reimburses for postage/handling. They have set
reimbursement amounts, but usually it's a bit more
than the actual cost.

Amazon deposits the money in your checking account
every few weeks. Some have argued that Amazon's
percentage is too high, but for me it was better than
having unwanted books taking up space. I'm not
inclined to fool around with eBay, so this was good
for me.

The listings stay posted only a short time (90 days I
think). I was surprised at what people wanted.

Paula

> Can anyone recommend ready-made Mac software for this [book cataloging] task?

There are a lot of choices in this area. When I
was researching a couple of years ago, I ended up
choosing Booxter (http://www.deepprose.com). A
few of the reasons:

- A good import facility. I cataloged my books in
an Excel spreadsheet for years and didn't want to
re-enter everything, so being able to import was
important.
- Lots of fields. I collect books, so I maintain
information that a non-collector wouldn't need
to. While Booxter doesn't support all the fields
I had in my Excel spreadsheet, it came closer
than any of the other choices at the time, and
has a Notes field so I can stuff extra
information in there.
- Barcode scanning.
- ISBN lookup from a large number of sources (23
in the current version, although you can turn off
ones you don't need).

It (optionally) integrates with Spotlight, but
also has a good internal search, and a "column
view" where you choose a field, then choose one
of the values in that field (for instance, click
on Author in the left column, the right column
displays all authors, click on one of the
authors, and work with just books by that
author). It has what looks like a good Export
facility, and exports to an iPod (although I've
never used either).

As I said, I researched this a couple of years
ago, and every program has been updated many
times since then, but I'm still happy with
Booxter.

[I'm not connected with Deep Pröse other than as a purchaser of Booxter.]

Brian

On 20 Jun 2006, at 17:06 , Robert Pyle wrote:
> Upon starting yet another "I've got to get organized!" push this
> morning, I discovered not one, but *three* books that I've bought two
> copies of. If I had all my books neatly cataloged, I could check
> before ordering that I don't already have one. (The question then
> would become, "Okay, but where is it?", which might be easier to
> answer.)
>
> Can anyone recommend ready-made Mac software for this task?

Delicious Library. It's very good with recent books, total crap with
old books.

And it lets you designate locations, check out books (or DVDs, CDs,
Video Games) to anyone in your address book, and will even print out
a "Library" slip showing the items checked out and when they are do
back.

Add a Barcode scanner or iSight and inputing items is pretty easy. I
use it for my DVDs, works a treat.

am 21.06.2006 11:07 Uhr schrieb tidbits-talktidbits.com unter
tidbits-talktidbits.com:

> If I had all my books neatly cataloged, I could check
> before ordering that I don't already have one. (The question then
> would become, "Okay, but where is it?", which might be easier to
> answer.)

Years ago I "bought" a shareware FileMaker 3 database called "Bookcatalogue"
-- it's by Onno Hoogendoorn from the Netherlands. I have used it to catalog
all my some 1.550 books. You can enter information about Author, Title,
Edition, Volume, Issue, Pages, Keywords, Publisher, Year/Date, Place, Notes,
Media, ISBN, Location, and Value. (Alas, its not to be found over the
Internet any longer...)

Over the years I have adapted it with my own fields and information.

I have now transferred that database to my Palm M515 in JFile format. So I
now have all informations of my books instantly accessible (me, too, has
bought some books double...). Changes in the FileMaker version are
automatically updated to the Palm and vice versa.

Udo

I'll go on a different tact and recommend LibraryThing-- <http://
www.librarything.com>.

It's a completely web-based tool--however, it works quite well. You
can get it to look up books in amazon (not just .com), the LoC, and I
think thirty different libraries throughout the globe. The founder
and designer of the website is a Mac user (all the features work with
Safari, since that's the founder's browser of choice), so I find the
website to be clean and well-organized. Advantages of LibraryThings
are that you can access it from any computer (there's even a beta
feature that allows you to access the website from your phone so you
can lookup what books you have anywhere); the founder (Tim) blogs
quite often and is active in the newsgroup support list on Google
Groups (also, he's supposed to be accessible via email, although I
never got any responses from emails I sent him); and it has a very
good recommendation system that compares user's libraries to
recommend books (my library is only partially entered so it has very
skewed recommendations). It has a social spin--you can see how many
people also have your book, see how they rated the book, and read
their reviews.

You can have a library of up to 200 books for free, after that you
have to pay $25 for a lifetime paid account or $10 for a year's use
of a one. It also has some more advanced features, like "universal
import" which can take a database or an amazon.com wish list, string
out the isbns, and add them to your library, so you can move to it
from another program.

It's not perfect (it goes down occasionally, the "works" system which
is user-controlled sometimes gives inaccurate information, apparently
non-Roman characters are currently having problems in the database),
but it's being improved. There are over 3 million books in its
library (if it was a library, it would be the 79th largest library in
America) and it's growing very quickly. Give it a shot; it's free
until you hit 200 books, enough to see if you like it.

Max

I used Delicious Library when I bought it at MacWorld 2005, but by
late 2005 I had swapped over to Bookpedia.

It doesn't look quite as nice, but because we don't have an Amazon
store in Australia, the ability to have other look up places made it
a winner for me.

Since then Bookpedia has significantly improved even further.


Charlie

We've used Readerware for years, with a 5-user license for a
homeschool coop's resource library, which works well with users using
more than one platform. On a LAN it networks quite nicely, and with
the server/client design, it's easy to allow for more than one user
adding and editing the data.

But for my personal audio/video/book library, the best solution has
been Delicious Library. It's very intuitive, ties in well with iCal
to see who's borrowed books or movies, and there is a free utility
for exporting the entire library as a website. I wish it could be
viewed by others on the LAN directly, but outputting to a web site
works fine for other family members with their own computer. We've
never lost data with either solution. Both use a database that could,
conceivably, become corrupted or damaged, so keep a backup.

With an iSight camera, it's simple to update and add content.
Readerware is much more flexible, but Delicious Library is for family
libraries what iWeb will someday be (hopefully) for family websites.

Jeffrey

I have been using Delicious Library but have recently been looking at
Bookpedia etc.

Though it is more elegantly designed and has some fields that are not
replicated in Bookpedia I find Delicious incredibly slow - opening,
open and closing. (Suggestions welcome).

I have imported information into Book/CD/DVD pedias with little
problem (the only one was that it did not assign the DVD title
correctly). I like many of its features - the variety of sites to
check against, that it uses an 'iTunes' interface. My one niggle is,
what seems to me to be, counter-intuitive keyboard shortcuts - Add
book is Command -F (Command-N is New Collection).

The jury is still out

Martin

I want to sort my books by the following fields:

Location: (Bedroom, library, living room...) Classification: (Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Gaming...) If Non-fiction, sort by Library of Congress number Author Series (if not null) Series Seq (if not null) Title

I also want a field for owner (Me, My wife, My daughter...)

I've looked at Readerware, Delicious Library, Booxter, and several others. Readerware is great for automated input, but fails in user-friendly interface. Delicious Library has a pretty interface, but falls down in the sorting and number of fields. Booxter is close, but also lacks some key fields for what I want.

On 01 Jul 2006, at 12:46 , Martin Foster wrote:
> I have been using Delicious Library but have recently been looking at
> Bookpedia etc.

My problem with Bookpedia is that the CD, DVD, and Booksa re three
totally separate programs (and more importantly, data stores).

This makes it of limited usefulness.

Also, in my testing, I could not get it to take barcode scans off my
usb barcode scanner (DL has no such trouble).

--
Lobotomy means never having to say you're sorry -- or anything else.