I'm a Beatles historian, with at least 3 or 4 dozen Beatles-related books in my collection. But unless I scan each book by barcode (which IS a cool way to do it, actually, unless they are in storage), I have to do my search for 'Beatles', scan through the responses when there are multiple releases of a book, and then add them one at a time. AND i seem to need to relaunch my search each time.
Truthfully, for a small investment of about $40 per module or $120 for the full suite (and often for free if you represent a not-for-profit organization) you can pick up a software package from a company called Collectorz.com that will allow you to catalog and classify your books, CDs, LPs, videotapes, DVDs, etc. VERY easily. I use it for the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. It's intuitive and allows for VERY quick adds ... based on search responses, by barcode or ISBN entry, etc. Your catalog can also be easily displayed online by adding their generated catalog pages to your website. They have litereally hundreds of options with regards to what you want displayed, and how you want it shown. It even has a lirbary card module, so that when we/I lend stuff from the collection I can keep track of who has it. I've done a chunk of my personal collection and all of the LIMHoF collection with this software, and it's really quite amazing.
'Library Thing' COULD be this good with some serious code work. I understand that it's free, but if you're going to go through all of this work to enter a collection, why do it with limitations? And yes, it's nice that it's accessible to all, but it's still living on their site. If the capability is there, isn't it better to have full control over how your catalog is displayed?
They're off to a good start, though.
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