Taming the Book Beast
 

I have been considering using a scanner, specifically a Cuecat scanner I picked up for free a few years ago to catalog my library. I could never find any freeware or inexpensive software that would look up ISBN numbers.

While adding programs to my Linux laptop, I did a search for cuecat and found Alexandria book manager which will work with Cuecats.

Unfortunately, I could not find a Linux program to decrypt the scrambled output from the scanner. However, 10 minutes research with Google and a few minutes with an x-acto knife and magnifying glass and my Cuecat is now a standard scanner.

I'm still getting the hang of handling the scanner, but I have scanned 20 books into Alexandria in about 10 minutes. It's taking 4 or 5 passes to get the scanner to read the ISBN barcode.

It's still a lot of fun. It really doesn't take much to make me happy.

At the time I picked up 2 or 3 CueCats when they were being handed out. I think I gave the other two away, but it might be time to start looking for them.

The beauty of this is that since the software is on my laptop, I can take the laptop to the various book hoards around the house and start cataloging.:D

dude. no fucking clue what you're talking about here, but it sounds like it's making you happy!

He's using a scanner and computer to make lists of his books.

well, I figured out that much, but lists--I thought you were scanning the whole book.

You have bar codes on the books in your house?

One of my first jobs as a young teen was to work for a friend of my mom's, entering all of her books into a database, including both biographical information and location in the house. I can't remember how many books it was in the end, but it was well into the thousands. She had a very large house.

I'm leaving mine uncategorized for the archeologists or CSI guys to take care of.

I had considered doing that ... Once upon a time I kept a hand-written cardfile with the names of all of my books, and if a short story collection, I had the titles of the stories and authors on the back. It was very cool, but I reached a point where I no longer kept up with it, and I suspect I've passed the point of no return as far as the sheer numbers of books that I have.

I also used to maintain a list of books I wanted to buy. This was kept in a steno pad. Now I have multiple amazon.com wishlists, and an impulse-buy control problem. If a week goes buy without at least two packages from amazon.com, my mailman asks me if I'm feeling okay.

you and me both, baby!

I am getting ready to purge at least two bookshelves worth. If anybody is interested in picking over the titles before I dump them, let me know.

[home]mmmmm books ....[/homer]

After the last haul from the library book sale (bought $20+ of books the first day and 1 overstuffed bag for $5 on the 'bag sale' the next day), my wife is pushing for me dumping some books.

Since I am planning a BBQ anyway, I may use it as an opportunity to give away books.

BTW Cloud, most new books have ISBN bar codes, usually on the back near the UPC code.

I sold/gave most of mine to a used bookstore before I moved. It would have been nice to have a list of all of them.