Greenwoodman Posted 28 April , 2006 Share Posted 28 April , 2006 Anybody use such software, or can recommend a program, please? My own book collection has reached a critical mass now, and having bought a book that was already languishing at the back of a bookcase, I feel the need to have a little more control over it. Either that or my latent sadness is surfacing, and I need to tick things off a list!! Not being a great technolover, it needs to fairly simple to be learn. And preferably able to search for book details on-line from an ISBN number - a system that automatically loads the book details has great appeal. I've looked at one or two free download programs, but they seemed too simple even for my limited ability. Any suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Maier Posted 28 April , 2006 Share Posted 28 April , 2006 I use and strongly recommend Book Collector. This will download complete book details from many sources, including the databases and catalogues of Amazon (you get a choice of countries), British Library, Library of Congress and the national libraries of Canada and most Western European countries. You just select one or more sources by checking its box. I am based in the UK so for me, Amazon UK for modern books and British Library for old books just about covers everything. You can search for the download by author, title, ISBN, etc. The Amazon download includes the cover picture which can be a great help in identification. You can also input the details of a modern book by using a barcode scanner but these are a bit expensive for me. The system also covers any books you loan out. You can categorise books every which way, including ‘wanted’ and ‘for sale’. Now, as soon as I see a book that looks interesting, I capture the details, mark it as ‘wanted’, and I have got it for good. Absolutely first class and not expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Stewart Posted 28 April , 2006 Share Posted 28 April , 2006 Greenwoodman, There's a programme in Office 2000 Professional, which is for book collections and which I use for my own collection. Whether or not Office 2003 has the same facility I couldn't say, but the Office 2000 one I find adequate for my own 300 plus books and it's in a database form. Graham. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 28 April , 2006 Share Posted 28 April , 2006 Looks like I am not the only person who needs something like this. Thanks for the pointer Clive, that looks to be a useful bit of kit. Being lazy I may have to go for the barcode scanner too. Clive, does it allow more than one field for price? For insurance purposes it would be good to have RRP, price paid for it, and the current approx value (esp for the rarer books.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Maier Posted 28 April , 2006 Share Posted 28 April , 2006 Charles, As standard, Book Collector has fields for purchase price, current price and cover price. It also has some user-definable fields as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mythago Posted 28 April , 2006 Share Posted 28 April , 2006 If you're prepared to consider an online solution, have a look at Library Thing. It's an online book cataloging system that allows you to upload your books by simply entering the ISBN (older pre-ISBN books have to entered manually). You can tag each book with a tag that has meaning to you, so for example I have tags for history, english literature, ww1 etc. You can export your catalogue as a tab delimited file or a .csv file into Excel if you want. You can even share your catalogue with other people, although I don't. It's free to upload up to 200 books. Worth checking out. Cas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greenwoodman Posted 30 April , 2006 Author Share Posted 30 April , 2006 Thank you all for your input, I'm very grateful. I've settled initially on Book Collector, and have downloaded the trial version, but am already thinking of purchasing the full version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 1 May , 2006 Share Posted 1 May , 2006 Thanks for clarification Clive. I have downloaded the trial version of Book Collector. Seems extremely easy to use and has a really impressive look up facility as you say. Am impressed and think I will go for the upgrade. Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hederer Posted 5 May , 2006 Share Posted 5 May , 2006 Thanks for clarification Clive. I have downloaded the trial version of Book Collector. Seems extremely easy to use and has a really impressive look up facility as you say. Am impressed and think I will go for the upgrade. Charles Thanks for posting this. I bought the software yesterday , and have found it pretty easy to use. I plan to try and do 10-20 books a week until I'm done! I do like how it goes out and fills in the information on my newer books--that saves some time. Has anyone found an easy way to insert multiple volumes of the same series? For example, to enter all 36 volumes of the 'Schlachten des Weltkrieges," series has been very time consuming. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Maier Posted 5 May , 2006 Share Posted 5 May , 2006 ... I plan to try and do 10-20 books a week until I'm done! ... That was my plan too. It stalled of course. But I will get there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hederer Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 That was my plan too. It stalled of course. But I will get there! Wow...I really like this software. I've managed to do over 300 books this weekend (thanks to the weather). I only wish it had a few more sources for books, but it's pretty darn good. Funny how going through your books can be a journey down memory lane. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Maier Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 ... I only wish it had a few more sources for books, but it's pretty darn good. ... I am glad it is proving useful. My version - 4.5.1 - has 22 book sources. If there is a particular catalogue you would like to see included, mention it to customer support. Maybe they can arrange it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hederer Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 I am glad it is proving useful. My version - 4.5.1 - has 22 book sources. If there is a particular catalogue you would like to see included, mention it to customer support. Maybe they can arrange it. Clive, I have to say it finds about 95% of what's out there, including some pretty esoteric titles. The library of congress and British library are especially useful for older volumes. Having the French and German system included is brilliant. It's very interesting to sit back and see what you have as you progress. I did find some volumes for a few sets of mine missing while working through them. A trip to the garage to open some boxes led to their being reunited. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Morgan Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 Does the program make the assumption that you always have just ONE copy of each book? I know it's meant to catalogue a collection rather than someone's stock, but it sounds as if it could be very useful to me too. Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hederer Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 Does the program make the assumprtion that you always have just ONE copy of each book? I know it's meant to catalogue a collection rahther than someone's stock, but it sounds as if it could be very useful to me too. Tom Tom, This from the manual: Edit|Duplicate Book The Duplicate Book function (Edit menu) can be used to make a copy of the currently selected book and add it to the database. This can speed up data entry if you have multiple similar versions of a book. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Morgan Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 Thanks Paul - I'll look at the websites again - sounds good. Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter Beckett Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 I have been using the program for about 3 years now and have a database just for WW1 related books They also have a great forum if you have any queries or problems. Book collection? Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Maier Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 Tom, Book Collector allows you to duplicate a book record with a single click. Presumably you can do this as many times as you like. It would be a very poor form of stock control though. You would finish up with x entries instead of one entry saying x copies. So you would have to count the entries to find out that you have x copies. And do that for hundreds of titles. Alternatively, you could set up a user-defined field for stock, but you would have to remember to change the number every time stock goes in and out. It would be labour intensive and prone to error. I can’t see it working well. I don’t think Book Collector would work well for your business because its database is an ‘island’ of information. You really need to link the book data with invoicing, ordering, online selling and so on. Book Collector does have export functions but they are not great. The Book Collector database may or may not be in a proprietary format but the file certainly has a proprietary suffix. I have tried changing this to one or two likely contenders but I have not been able read the data into Access for example. You could use general-purpose trading software. This need not be very expensive but it would not have dedicated book data entry facilities, so you would have to input titles manually. After that though, you would have stock control, ordering, invoicing and all the usual business stuff. Alternatively, you can get dedicated booktrade software but I expect it is pricey. There are a couple of options that could be useful. I have no personal knowledge of these. Abebooks provides HomeBase free of charge to booksellers. According to the blurb, booksellers can use this “to streamline every aspect of bookselling: from maintaining their entire inventory, issuing receipts and invoices to selling their books online through Abebooks. (For Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP)” HomeBase reads in book data from the ISBN number so it would save you a lot of work. I imagine older books would have to be entered manually though. You have to be signed up as an Abebooks bookseller for the ISBN lookup to work, so a cost is involved. Bookshops Online seems to seems to hold out the prospect of an online shop at an affordable price. I have not read the small print though. This service accepts HomeBase files as a means of data entry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Fair Posted 7 May , 2006 Share Posted 7 May , 2006 I have now upgraded to the full version and am very impressed. It seems to cover most of the more obscure stuff that I have, even if it is only from the BL catalogue. Might be useful if it could link into abebooks and/or Alibris which would help most with the pre ISBN material. Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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