OT: organizing my home library...

tawbur · Post by **tawbur** » Mon May 19, 2008 12:19 am

I have so many books, that every year before our hs bookfair I spend so much time trying to decide if I need to buy a book or if I already have it, that I want to put info of all our books, music cds, movie dvds/videos into
a sortable and printable list on our computer. This will be my main organizing project this summer, but I'm hoping it won't take all summer long to get it done.

So I'm looking for a program that I can do this with using a laser barcode scanner. I've looked online and have found 2 companies that sell this for about $200 (including the scanner), http://www.collectorz.com and
http://www.readerware.com/index.html

I don't know anything about these companies, except that one is from
the Netherlands and the other is from California. I'd like to read
some trustworthy reviews on these types of programs, but I haven't
found much info online. In fact, these are the only 2 companies I
could find that sell these types of programs. I'm sure there are
others, I just don't know where to look.

So, can you tell me if you know anything about either one or can
recommend either? Or can you recommend another company or program that you like better for this?

Thanks!
Teresa

crlacey · Post by **crlacey** » Mon May 19, 2008 4:55 am

I use www.librarything.com and it only cost $25 for a lifetime membership. My mom and I share this since we are always swapping books back and forth. This allows us to check from any computer whether or not we already have the book and who's house it's at. I know you can use a scanner with it, but I've never tried that. So far I've got 300 books loaded and still have a few more book shelves to go.

netpea · Post by **netpea** » Mon May 19, 2008 6:02 pm

crlacey wrote:I use www.librarything.com and it only cost $25 for a lifetime membership. My mom and I share this since we are always swapping books back and forth. This allows us to check from any computer whether or not we already have the book and who's house it's at. I know you can use a scanner with it, but I've never tried that. So far I've got 300 books loaded and still have a few more book shelves to go.

I just signed up for this to try it out after reading your post. you can add Carrie's manuals to your library. I searched for bigger, Little Hearts and beyond and they came up in the search.

This could be very cool. Thanks for the link.

OH, they also SELL barcode scanners at Librarything for $15.
http://www.librarything.com/cuecat.php

crlacey · Post by **crlacey** » Mon May 19, 2008 6:09 pm

I didn't know you could add the manuals. Cool! But I guess they'd have an ISBN to add them since they're sold at other stores.

netpea · Post by **netpea** » Mon May 19, 2008 6:14 pm

so let's say I bought the scanner and uploaded all our books, could librarything list the books according to genre or other categories?

tawbur · Post by **tawbur** » Mon May 19, 2008 8:05 pm

Library thing sounds good, but how much info does it gather, like the genre, publisher, #of pages, edition, description, dewey decimal #, LOC #, etc?

Does it allow you to sort, export to an Excel file, print? I'd like to be able to transfer the info to my Palm Pilot to take with me to bookstores, etc.

Does it work with movies and music cds?

Also, someone mentioned to me another free source at http://www.gurulib.com which can be used for books, movies, and music together. I'm wondering how it compares to librarything?

Teresa

Dorla · Post by **Dorla** » Mon May 19, 2008 9:32 pm

Last night I started organizing ALL my books, and I use Libra http://getlibra.com/ which is FREE. I am manually entering the ISBN because I do not want to wait a few days for a barcode reader to arrive and my webcam does not work with the program!
However, after I enter the ISBN number it shows me the cover of the book with summary and files it nicely on the virtual shelf. Then we color code it to go on the bookshelf and we are done. We have completed over 100 books in a few hours and love how easy it is to use. You can also organize your DVD's and CD's. you can also mark the books that are loaned to anyone.
Try it. It's free!
Dorla

crlacey · Post by **crlacey** » Tue May 20, 2008 5:16 am

I don't know the answers to your library thing questions. I can tell you that the first 250 books are free. So you could add 3 or 4 books and play with it to see if it will fit your needs. It works well for our family since you can add your own tags which allows our family to search for "men's historical fiction, at so and so's house" (My parents and I combine our library so we don't buy duplicate books.)