Dear Lazyweb

[fengshui]

What is the best online book cataloging site these days? I have a bunch of my books cataloged in Readerware, which works all-right, but I'm thinking about going through and re-syncing my collection and my catalog, and that seems like a good time to consider a software switch

Comments

[heathey]

Question: If I recall correctly, you've already scanned most of your books? What would you suggest for someone like me with no scanner thingy who is just getting started cataloging?

[fengshui]

The cheapest solution is to buy a cuecat from Librarything. However, while the cuecat works, it's not the best scanner. It's LED based, which means that you have to put the device right against the barcode, scan it back and forth, and hope that it gets it right. The device that I recommend is the Symbol CS1504. This scanner is totally portable so you don't have to bring your books to the computer, you can just walk around to the books, scanning them one at a time. It's also laser based, which means you don't have to rub the scanner across the book, trying to get just the right speed for it to scan. Unfortunately, the CS1504 costs about $80, which is a lot more than the cuecat.

Note that a bar-code scanner will not get all of your books. For example, a lot of older books don't have bar-codes, and many don't even have ISBN numbers. Those you'll have to sit down at a computer to input.

[lhn]

That's pretty much been what runs us down every time we start trying a home cataloging project. Scanning is one thing, but neither of us has it in us to keep manually entering the many, many unbarcoded books. (It doesn't help that the old paperbacks with no or useless barcodes start with long runs right at the beginning of the alphabet. (Anderson and Asimov, I'm looking at you.) I think prilicla got as far as the second or third bookcase last time, but...

Though we were using Readerware, since the idea of uploading our holdings to the cloud for public viewing violates what lingering shreds of a sense of privacy we're still managing to hold onto.

[prilicla]

I think prilicla got as far as the second or third bookcase last time, but...

Oh, if only that were true. I think I pooped out in the middle of James Blish's Star Trek books.

[fengshui]

While I am worried about the non-codes books problem, I'm hoping that going to librarything will help a lot over readerware. While readerware is a pretty good program, if you don't have the ISBN, finding the book can be trouble. Even books that have clear SBNs sometimes don't look up right in RW. My hope is that because LT has a large user community, I can leverage their expertise in this. Also, LT supports the Library of Congress catalog number, which is listed in a lot of books from before the ISBN was standardized. Finally, I can look up books in LT and see a cover image before I add it. One of the problems I had with old books in RW is that I could find something close in LoC, but I was never sure if I had the exact right book.

If I do move forward with this project, I'll post about it when I'm done. :)