Lubetkin.net

CompuSchmooze June 2007: Book Collector Software Makes Cataloguing Easy
By Steven L. Lubetkin
Copyright © 2007 Steven L. Lubetkin. All rights reserved.
WORD COUNT: 695

Thanks to the sheer difficulty of finding books in boxes and shelves in the attic, I am fairly certain that we have bought third, fourth, and fifth copies of such literary staples as Catcher in the Rye, and Death of A Salesman.

I’ve always wanted to catalog all the books I own but I always deferred the project because of the sheer manual labor involved in writing down every book’s information and then typing it into the computer.

I tried taking a laptop into the attic, where many of the volumes are stored, but it’s just too hot and uncomfortable to sit there typing. Then I thought about using voice recognition to record ISBN numbers, the unique identification number assigned to every book, but that was cumbersome and time-consuming. And so, the project never really got off the ground.

More recently, I learned about the Collectorz.com set of software cataloguing programs, made by a firm in the Netherlands called Bitz & Pixelz .

There are databases for music, movies, comics, games, and MP3 files, in addition to the book program. What sets this vendor’s programs apart is its tight integration with a handheld barcode scanner that can read and store up to 500 of the ISBN bar codes that have been on the back cover of most books since the mid-1980s.

Instead of writing down the book’s information, you just scan its ISBN bar code as if you were using the self-checkout in a grocery store. Then, you plug the scanner into the computer through a provided USB cable, and Book Collectorz software automatically looks up the ID numbers in the Library of Congress, Amazon.com, and several other major library resources.

If the number is recognized (and most are), the program does an amazing job of filling in card catalog information, including downloading a thumbnail image of the book cover. The program tracks all the information about a book you would want. A complete description is on the Collectorz.com website .

The company initially used a scanner called the “CueCat,” an early consumer barcode scanner shaped like a feline, according to company CEO Mark-Jan Harte.

CueCat scanners were once distributed free by Radio Shack as a web surfing aid. The store printed bar codes in its circulars, and when you scanned them with the CueCat, your computer navigated the Internet to the Radio Shack web page for that item.

Today, Collectorz.com uses a more sophisticated Flic scanner , and it works smoothly. It takes a few minutes to get the knack of aiming the scanner at bar codes at a slight angle, but it’s a very efficient way to go through your library or DVD/CD collection scanning the codes.

“If you only have a hundred books or so, it’s probably not worth it,” Harte says. “But if you have 500 or a thousand books, then it probably can save you a lot of time.”

Books published before ISBN bar coding was standardized do present an obstacle, Harte admits. “You’ll have no choice but to enter at least the author and title yourself, but you can search a number of sources that are incorporated into Book Collector, so you can still retrieve the information about those books.”

The program is particularly popular with churches and not-for-profit groups, which often can’t afford to buy professional library management software, he said.

A new version of Book Collector is in the works, Harte says. Although features are still in flux, he says the new version will definitely support the new ISBN-13 bar code format and shared network use. One other limitation is that even though the Flic scanner can be used with CD or DVD bar codes for the other catalog programs, it’s not possible to scan barcodes from different types of products in a single scanning session. You have to initialize the scanner separately for each type of product.

Nevertheless, it’s a great way to get control of that library and stop buying multiple copies of books you own but just can’t find. Each database is $39.95 separately, but there are several different packages that include multiple databases and the Flic scanner for $199.95, about a $75 savings.


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