As grown-up items around the Gatekeeper HQ retreat in favor of plastic toddler and baby playthings, we are looking for ways to optimize some of our use of space. One obvious target is the preponderance of bookcases containing classic, frequently-accessed works such as: Statistical Methods in Medical Research and Introduction to Compiler Construction. Many of these are textbooks from graduate school, or even undergrad classes, and let’s face it, I haven’t cracked open Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle too often since the early 90’s. Actually, if my grade from that Humanities Tutorial class is any indication, I didn’t crack it open often enough then.
Anyway…. My point was that a method to clear out some of the clutter without having to part with some items that might be useful someday, we needed a good way to put these things a little more “away” while still being able to retrieve them on demand. Enter Delicious Library. This oh-so-slick little app let’s us take advantage of the built-in camera on the new MacBook Pro to barcode scan and catalog all these old books. It uses Amazon’s web services for actually looking up a barcode or ISBN number to retrieve all the appropriate data. We simply need to tag the entry with a box number, and start filling up file storage boxes with books.
Overall the program has performed quite admirably, although you’ll definitely have more luck getting good information on newer books. This is probably more an reflection on the contents of Amazon’s catalog than on the behavior of the app itself. If you have a Mac with a built-in camera and any substantial number of books, CDs, movies, or video games you would like to track, I highly recommend checking this thing out. The free trial will give you a pretty good idea of what the experience will be like, and the full version will set you back only $40.
PS If you noticed a referral entry on the Amazon links above, it’s from Delicious Library, not from me. I’m not trying to make any money from the 2 other people who ever look at this site, trust me.