My virtual library

When it comes to gift-giving, I quite like the idea that people give you something that they would like to give you. However, that creates stress for some, who appreciate having some ideas to prevent them trawling the streets for hours looking for inspiration, so I often end up doing a “list”, by request, around birthday time.

This year I told my sisters that I would like the Delicious Monster software, so I can catalogue all my books (don’t ask me why I think this is necessary, I just like the idea). So yesterday I downloaded the program and started to have some fun scanning my books. It is surprisingly quick just running them past iSight (this program only works on a Mac) and I did two book shelves reasonably quickly. It’s still going to take me a while to get them all entered, but hopefully I will keep up to date from then on (it's also the intention to do something of a cull along the way). I believe I can then load my “library” onto the web, so one day I might share.

It has, however, taken the shine off those nice old books that don’t have an ISBN, let alone a bar code. They are a bother. For some of them there is no near match with the publishing year, so I just pick one from the list that comes up on a title search. (You wouldn’t want to be OCD about it, and have a lot of old books, or your life could become a misery.) The beautifully-bound old books look the nicest on my real shelves, but they look like blank nothings on my virtual shelves. Hmmm.