But I’ve unearthed my book cataloguing software. Well, that is, I unearthed it, copied the database file over to the new computer and went ahead and purchased a new licence. I think I may have purchased a lifetime licence some time way back when, but a new one was 40 dollars and, seriously, the time it would take me to find documentation and communicate with the company to get that sorted is worth more to me than a measly 40 dollars. Besides, it’s pretty good software, so I don’t mind supporting them a bit.
It’s called BookCAT. If you have a collection (or you’re responsible for a collection) that is being lent out, I imagine it’s really great. For us booknerds it’s great, too. You can track all sorts of things, like where you bought the book, for how much, when you read it, how much it may be worth now, and where you keep it. There are custom fields, so anything they haven’t thought of you can add (I’ve got «Foreign currency purchase price» and «Purchase notes», and may add Bookcrossing ID).
The downside is the time it takes to enter the data. The process has been sped up a bit in the new version, since you can get a lot of information off the internet automagically, but if you really want to keep track of where you purchased a book and how much it cost, obviously you need to enter that. And I last updated my database in… 2005. Ugh. In fact I had version 6 of the software on my old computer, I now have version 10. Still, importing the old database was painless, so there is little cleanup to be done, and if I take one shelf at a time and call it a work in progress, I may, sometime in the next century, get more or less up to date.
We’ll see.
I’ll start with the books we purchased in Scotland, if I can at least keep up to date with new purchases I may stand a fighting chance.
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