[Sca-cooks] book cataloging programs

[Stefan li Rous]

Selene Colfox asked:
 >>>
Ana L. Valdés wrote:
 > I discovered a marvelous software to classify my huge library,
 > Delicious, excellent, connected to Amazon database. Sadly, only for
 > Mac so far...

Please tell me more - Mac head here, in need of GOOD library program.
<<<

I still highly recommend Readerware, It is shareware and is available  
for Mac and Windows and, I think, Linux.
Given either the ISBN number or Library of Congress number it will  
scan through Amazon.com, Amazon.com in UK, and dozen or more other  
online databases to come up with its information. When it finds  
information for the same book in different sources, it does a decent  
job of combining it and it will show a cover illustration of the book  
if it can find it.

If you pay the $10 extra or so and purchase the software on CD, they  
are still throwing in either a USB or PS/2 QueCat. This was a cheap  
barcode reader that was put out by one of the now-gone dot.com  
companies I think. With this, if the book has the ISBN encoded and  
printed on it, you don't even have to type in the number. Simply scan  
the reader across the barcode. I've found that this works fairly  
well, although sometimes I have to scan a couple of times to get it  
to take the scan. Sometimes I simply find out that the barcode is not  
the ISBN number but some other kind of barcode.

The website is: http://www.readerware.com

Looking at the website, I notice:
February 10th, 2006 - Readerware 2.97 includes iPod® support, a new  
thumbnail view, multiple column sorting, drag and drop updates,  
server enhancements & more.<<<

So, I guess I need to go do an upgrade, although I have no idea what  
"iPod® support" includes.

It also allows you to export your book list to a Palm Pilot, although  
it's rather primative. My idea was to have that on hand as I browsed  
the Pennsic booksellers, time before last. Unfortunately, I found  
that PDAs really don't like the primative conditions of Pennsic,  
although part of the problem was that, that Pennsic was cloudy so I  
had trouble using the solar panel to recharge it. I also found that I  
*still* managed to duplicate some book purchases when a large order  
of books arrived after Pennsic. I had ordered the books back in June  
or July, but because the order hadn't arrived before Pennsic, the  
books weren't in the database at Pennsic.

I think I'm currently up to almost 1500 books, plus a large stack  
that either have no ISBN or Library of Congress number or have a  
wrong number, which I haven't gotten around to entering by hand.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****