For over a year now, I’ve been droolingly coveting Delicious Library, a Mac-based piece of software that acts as a beautifully designed digital library – cataloging all of your books (and movies and games and music) with the touch of a bluetooth scanner, USB scanner, or manually entered ISBN number. It even syncs with Amazon to let you search for books with the merest hint of the title, and add the right one to your digital bookshelf. You can check out books to borrowers by just dragging a book onto their name and setting the return-by date, and they’ll get a handy little email reminding them not to set your book on fire instead.
You can also, once you’re done inputting your entire library, search the whole collection by all kinds of factors – all novels that are listed in a certain genre, for instance, or which reference Samoa.
I’m not sure you can tell how much I’m hyperventilating with excitement through the screen. Because I just bought it. Stuart’s been mock-resisting it for a year, telling me I don’t need to be any more organize-crazed than I already am, but he’s wrong. And what’s more, he can’t do anything about it.
See, Stuart’s going to Berlin for four days without me after Thanksgiving, so I figured I deserved the kind of gift that’d keep me happily buried in my apartment organizing things for that weekend. Once he gets back and all of our books are digitally archived and cross-referencable, boy, HE’LL be sorry he went to Berlin without me. In more ways than one.
As you can see from the timestamp on this post, I’ve been playing with it for well over two hours. I’ve already input all the books that are lying around on my office desk, languishing for want of a third bookshelf for the living room (shuttup YES we need it). I ordered an inexpensive USB scanner but I’m not even sure I’ll need it, since the Amazon-link makes it so easy to just search for the title without getting up from your laptop.
And you know, when I happily typed in my financial details to purchase the license, I actually asked myself why everyone in the whole world doesn’t have this. Perhaps my myopic tunnel vision doesn’t allow for the whiff of a possibility that everyone in the world isn’t as in love with cross-referencing as I am. Or libraries. Or puppies. I mean, come on.
Oh, and while I’m at it? I’ll be alphabetizing our shelves. Why not, right?
gkhrd
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this item must be on every librarian’s wish list. especially if she has OCD.
Alphabetising shelves is a must. Moving house offered the perfect opportunity to Karen and I.
Though I’ve been considering an alternate method for my DVDs, whereby they are ordered primarily by their certificate, and thereafter alphabetically. Then I can put the 18s on the top shelf, the 15s below them, and so on and so forth.
that is pretty amazing, have you done http://www.librarything.com.? it does similar stuff, but in a sharing kind of way so you can see what other people read. it’s pretty cool as well. i love it.
I think I’ve mentioned I’m currently in library school, so this is very appealing! I like how it shows the books on the shelves, very cool. We learned all about how the acid in the paper is just eating away at the books though, it’s really depressing. The video and the lecture have really caused me to 1. not buy anymore books, and 2. sell what I do have now. Unless you can find the books with the little infinity symbol (made from alkaline paper), but that is only about 10% of books.
Sorry to be Debbie Downer, but I know you will still keep collecting and buying books and having fun with it! That really is a cool program.
Hi! Delurking to say that I am drooling at the sight of this software and bookshelves are always on my must-get list. Who doesn’t love cross-referencing? And more practically, knowing who the heck has borrowed my books would be great. I was considering an old-school library system for a while (stamp and all), but this is soooo much cooler…
The first girls’ night out you have after I get back, I’ll forcibly de-alphabetize.
Absent-minded browsing of the shelves without knowing what will catch your is one of the principal pleasures of reading!
OMG. WANT. Although, I do have to agree with Stuart a teeny bit on the alphebetizing of the shelves. I like to randmoly browse, though I do keep books grouped generally by author or subject matter.
You know, I have a hard time lending books out to people, because they never come back to me in the condition they went out in. The covers get all smushed and the pages get crinkled. I once lent a book out to a girl who not only took it into the tub with her but DROPPED IT IN THE WATER. It’s one thing to do to your own mass-market paperback, but NOT MINE.
Holy crap. This is my kind of computer game.
And it’s not like I’m going to Berlin for fun-without-Krissa reasons!
“mock-resisting”
But of course.
awesome. i like that way better than my current method. i’ll have to wait until the semester is over though or i won’t get any studying done. thanks for the link!
Damn, where was this software two years ago? When the urge struck me to catalog my collection, I rolled my own software to do it. Punch in the ISBN, and thanks to Amazon, I get all the lovely details.
Ah, nerds. We may not get laid, but we GET OUR BOOKS CATALOGED!
I alphebetised my bookshelves two years ago – it was the most satisfying saturday night of my life.
seriously.
Have you ever visited librarything.com? Similar, only different, but I’m hooked.
When you’re done, will you come do a little scrapbooking for me? I have all the supplies, and pictures organized since 2001. They just won’t jump into the damn books themselves, no matter how hard I pray.
Check out LibraryThing – a web-based library linked to among other sites, Amazon.com.
Check out LibraryThing – a web-based library linked to Amazon.com among other sites.
I want! Maybe I can convince le husband to make it a stocking stuffer sort of thing?
So. Completely. Awesome.
Wow…that’s almost enough to make me defect to Mac this instant. I LOVE that!
But do you intend to alphabetize everything all together? Or break it down by fiction, essays, humor, reference, philosophy, how-to, and OH MY GOD this is where I wound up stumbling in my own attempts. I wound up with a brilliant but impenetrable-to-all-but-me sequence, starting from a dictionary and ending with phone books, that wended its way through my whole library and linked each book to the ones that were most similar to it. Then Kel moved the bookshelves, removing every book and replacing them casually. Now my system is kaput but I’m enjoying the serendipity of looking for “Brief History of Time” and stumbling across “Bridge at San Luis Rey” and deciding I’d rather read that one again. I’ve preserved the alphabetical order in the spicerack though. Some things are not negotiable.
hmm, you are so right. I’ve actually had delicious library for a year or two now and its the most amazing thing. Of course mine is mostly DVDs and video games but you know, to each their own right?… and hmm, i dont know if you’re running 10.4 but they have a little widget that works with it, fantabulous. I AM thieubuster.
oh and on a kinda side note i still have one of your books that i stole from you like two years ago…. i’ll give it back, i swear.
Krissa is MIA!