Organize your books collection – without tearing yourself

I love books, I read some of what I collect! I may go from one book to another without finishing it. I love coming back to books I read earlier. Two weeks ago, I bought 26 books in one shot. The largest purchase of books I ever made. I was fulfilled!

My library case is already filled up and I needed a way to organize the books I have. I had tried with a spreadsheet earlier, but I wanted something better this time. I did not even want to type in all titles and details myself. That would be too much of work! I would rather read a book in that time!

Enter Books! A MacOS X application that can read barcodes using the inbuilt camera on my MacBook and fill up book details! Just what I needed! (It’s Open Source too)

Books - Add a new book screen

I used it and I can describe the experience in one word – Delightful! I was so happy with the ease, I have already shown the app to my family. That’s unique – does not happen for a lot of apps!

• It correctly detected ISBN for most of my books.
• I did not have much luck with 13 digit ISBN – though detection worked, I was not able to find book information from Amazon/others.
• Especially so with Indian publishers. For many, I had to enter the title and pull info manually.
• I wish Gujarati books had ISBN too! Would have made it so easy! (I inherit a huge collection of Gujarati books from my dad 😉
• In just two hours, I could add about 90 books to the system! That was cool!

Books - Main Screen