Internet Book Database? 232
Anonymous Coward writes "Just about everyone has used either the CDDB
or freedb CD databases. And many
people are also familiar with DVD
Profiler, a well developed database for DVD fans. Each of these public
databases have a number of wonderful strengths, and a few weaknesses, but they
are well thought out and well developed. After searching Google, sourceforge and every other search engine I could think of, I have come to the conclusion that there is not a well developed internet book database. While many people would be quick to point out the various commercial websites (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc),
and the various library databases (Library of
Congress, Boston Public
Library, and other online catalogs),
none of these online databases offer the same ease of use of DVD Profiler, or
the open structure of the online CD databases. The closest program I could
find was the shareware program Readerware.
This program will search several web sites and download the pertinent
information, but it is extremely inefficient, as it does not then store the data
in a central database to make it easier for the other users, and in my opinion,
the UI is terrible. What programs, if any, do those of you reading /. use to keep track of your books? If you were to start an open source internet book database project, what
features would you include in it?" Books in Print is the definitive book database; apparently it costs about $30,000/year to license it.
To keep track of my books? (Score:2, Informative)
What would be the point of a book database? The databases for DVDs and CDs allow for players on a machine to spit out relevant track/title information. I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason to have a book database.
Re:To keep track of my books? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To keep track of my books? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:To keep track of my books? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To keep track of my books? (Score:1)
And books at work... (Score:2)
Hmmm... I am sure there must be ISBN search facilities I can screen-scrape.... Coworker types ISBN of their newly received book into a front end and voila! I can grep for it.
Xix.
Re:To keep track of my books? (Score:2)
Works nicely, I've considered using that for my own book collection. But, how would you catalog the enormous amount of books that do not have ISBNs? I've got books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and I can't assign numbers to them quite so easily. So, while this database would be great, you would need a separate primary key from the ISBN.
Granted, almost any book today has an ISBN. But, there's a huge chunk of books that do not. And having another field in the database (for unique IDs of books) bloats up the necessary size. And, by not requiring an ISBN, you allow duplicate entries far too easily. Don't get me wrong, I would love something like this. But, it's more difficult to implement than a unified slashdot opinion.
If you only have one bookcase... (Score:2)
Re:To keep track of my books? (Score:3, Insightful)
To keep track of your references (Score:3, Interesting)
If you just want to import citations, the Z39.50 [loc.gov] search and retrieval protocol is the way to import from yor library catalog and many online databases. Indexdata has number of multiplatform tools that you can use, such as YAZ [indexdata.dk] (a z39.50 client) and PHPYAZ [indexdata.dk]. Three commercial packages import from Z39.50 sources nicely (Bookwhere [webclarity.info], Procite [procite.com] and Endnote [endnote.com]) both Procite and Endnot work well at managing your footnotes during workprocessing, taking care of numbering and layout (e.g. APA or Chicago Manual of Style, etc.).
If you want something under GPL and more oriented to managing web sites and other Internet resources, then you may want to try hypatia [sourceforge.net]. You'll have to ask special for it, but it's available. Here are the parts I've seen so far:
Have you tried the Dewey Decimal System? (Score:3, Informative)
That way, when the power goes out, I can still find the right book by candlelight.
Re:Have you tried the Dewey Decimal System? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Have you tried the Dewey Decimal System? (Score:3, Informative)
At least that's the theory. I'm over 200 books so far, and I've just finished about 1/3 of the books.
This is gonna take some time.
Re:Have you tried the Dewey Decimal System? (Score:2)
Danny.
Another use for a Cue Cat (Score:3, Interesting)
And what better to scan the ISBN with than a Cue Cat. My mother has about 400 paperback romance novels, and every time she goes to the bookstore, she can't figure out if she's read that book yet or not. She picks a book up, reads two pages, and says "I can't tell if I've read that one before or not." (Of course, I ask her how can she tell?) A Cue Cat and a CDDB style book database would allow me to scan the barcode and catalog every one of her books very quickly so she can bring a printout to the bookstore with her.
number of pages! (Score:1, Offtopic)
.............. I NEVER LEARNED TO READ!!
nevermind.
Wrote my own (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wrote my own (Score:4, Interesting)
This is also a shameless plug for one of my IRC friends responsible for this. Hi Latinum.
Re:Wrote my own (Score:2)
Format issue (Score:2, Insightful)
Books In Print is a great resource, if you have access to it. Amazon works well as a poor man's version.
What would be the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What would be the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
I want to be able to use a barcode scanner (or even type the ISBN by hand), and pull all the relevant information from a DB to my local machine. This is exactly the point of CDDB, as I see it.
If I don't have to enter all the information by hand for a CD, why should I have to do it for a book?
--jcwren (owner of about 2700 books)
Re:What would be the point? (Score:5, Informative)
Then write a quicky Perl script to scan through the records and any that don't have all the information filled in, go scrub it off of Amazon's web site.
I've already written several Perl scripts that scrub data from Amazon. It's pretty simple.
(hint:
use LWP::Simple;
$page = get http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/$isbn;
($
)
Re:What would be the point? (Score:2)
Yikes, what does this say about the state of MP3s?
Re:What would be the point? (Score:2)
A publically available book database is an entirely different matter.
Re:What would be the point? (Score:2)
Re:What would be the point? (Score:2)
Re:What would be the point? (Score:2)
anybody think there'd be copyright issues in snagging the info from amazon?
Here's a use I want to see (Score:1)
But peep this: What if there was some kinda database that had the whole book in digital form, but was only searchable instead of readable. That way when fools need to find out instances of a certain word of phrase in a book, they could find out on the web, and get page numbers to look up in they hard copy. It'a keep the publishers happy cause you wouldn't be able to pirate they material, and it'a keep readers happy cause they'd have some of the digital benefits that they cain't get wit a paper book.
Re:What would be the point? (Score:2)
I owuld love to scan my books barcode, and have all the relevant information out into a local database. Then I can track my books, use a wireless connection to log on at home and see if I already own a book I fine in a local used book store.
I have over 1000 books, this could be tremendously useful. My wife could use it a a quick and effecient means to see if I already have a collector book.
Re:What would be the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
you may be asking the wrong crowd... (Score:2, Funny)
While I understand some /. posters actually do know how to read, I suspect that the closest they get to a book is the title, which tells them all they need to know in order to hold definitive opinions on the book's author, subject, publisher, and political position.
All kidding aside, the resource my wife regularly uses is google to find pages regarding books she reads for her book groups.
I would love to see an internet book database, though I know of none. In fact, I would be interested in contributing to such a project.
The Example of CDDB (Score:5, Interesting)
So While I really like the idea of the database, I do not like the possibility of the thievery of honest work by generous people.
Is there someway so that this could be donated into the public domain or something from day one?
(just trying to wrap my mushy mind around this for the moment.)
Like this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe by making the source available under the GPL, and making the ability for different instances of the database to exchange information with each other be a part of the project?
That way anyone with a T1 and a fairly large disc could have his own bookDb.
That way, no single entity would be in exclusive control of the data.
On the other hand no two databasers would be exactly the same.
Hmm...
Database design is not my field really, maybe I should shut up, and just write a few frontends to the db once someone has dreamt one up...
Re:Like this? (Score:1)
Re:Like this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because the ISBN is in both the querying database and the databases it uses as a reference doesn't mean the entry contains the same data.
And if it doesn't, how should the db know which post is the more correct?
Not a trivial problem to solve, you can't have the databases trust each other too much since you don't want som lame script kiddie getting pleasure from injecting lots of false data and watching it spread...
But, like I said, this is not my field of expertise, I'm sure there are a lot of people on slashdot that know a lot more about the subject...
GPL won't help (Score:2)
Apart from these technical considerations, it's very likely that one database will become the standard that everyone uses, even when there is more than one choice (everyone will use the most extensive, most correct database). I doubt that there will be many syncronizations into this database, most people will be interested in making a copy of it.
All in all I think the best bet is to incorporate a feature that makes it easy to automatically dump the database to a mirror at a certain time (midnight or so). There's no good way to make sure that this actually get's done though, but you can always write a screenscrape application to punish the organization that doesn't supply you with a dump (scraping the entire database will hurt them bad). When the organization goes nasty, you can switch over to a copy and try to beat them with an open alternative.
Re:The Example of CDDB (Score:2)
I'm thinking that if someone took the freeDB model and translated it to handle books or movies, or whatever, it would be a very good thing. One thing that I have wanted for ever is similar to MoodLogic [moodlogic.net], to categorize and index MP3s. Having that open source, coupling with a database would rock. Even with books, it's very useful.
Soon as my life calms down with work (Oh in say 3 years) that will be the first open source project I start if there isn't already one. Something to manage movies, mp3s, cds, and books. My goal is to have it tie into robotics so it links to a DVD changer to play the song, or loads the mp3 on the computer, or pulls the book out of a bookshelf and monitors whats out on loan, etc.
Just my little perfect world.. i'm also building a router in a tree pot so take my suggestions with a large grain of salt
Re:The Example of CDDB (Score:2)
Re:The Example of CDDB (Score:3, Interesting)
Form a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that owns and operates the database. Draw up the corporate charter such that the database must be maintained for the sole benefit of the community, that users' activity will never be tracked, etc.
My (limited) understanding is that the law makes 501(c)(3) charters very hard to change. As such, new management can't just waltz in and "sell out" the company and its resources.
The only remaining danger is that the organization becomes politically influential and either leverages that influence to the detriment of the community, or itself comes under the influence of corrupt organizations.
Schwab
Re:The Example of CDDB (Score:2)
So feel free to work out a payment scheme. But don't stop other companies, or generous individuals from doing the same. If you can't offer a better (consistent and fast) service than volunteers can, don't expect payment.
My suggestion for hosting it would be a distributed system where a round-robin DNS points you to various servers based on load and time of day. They all sync up every hour or so, and changes have to come through the master server. (Prevent duplicate entries.)
Space is cheap, so there's no reason to fragment the database, only to distribute the queries to save bandwidth and CPU time.
I'd host a node of this, if it existed. Tell the master server to limit how many people it passes to me and I'd happily dedicate 25% of my bandwidth to it.
Relevant (Score:1)
I will continue using my book shelf for the time being.
singlefile (Score:4, Informative)
Re:singlefile (Score:2, Informative)
From its website:
Singlefile is an easy-to-use web-based service that helps you organize the books you own, the books you are reading, the books you've read and the books you want to read.
You can use it to keep track of the books you've loaned to friends, or books you haven't bought/read yet, or to find out how many non-fiction paperbacks with 275 pages you own, etc. Singlefile is also great for keeping a record of your books for insurance purposes. And, in affiliation with Amazon.com, you can discover and buy new books you might enjoy based on the authors in your collection!
I think a free service is what is wanted by the original poster!
37signals (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to be a project of 37signals [37signals.com]. Some interesting work in their portfolio.
Re:[OT] Re:37signals (Score:2)
Cue::Cat (Score:2, Interesting)
Ain't it easier to just look at the cover??
Re:Cue::Cat (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice idea, but... (Score:1)
Re:Cue::Cat (Score:2)
I think you just hit the nail on the head.
The point of CDDB like databases is to create a global database of meta data for digital content so to make it easy for people to assign consistant meta data to their content...basically, not to have to type in track info when ripping a cd to mp3.
With books, the physical medium doesn't translate well into a digital form. Sure, there will eventually be e-books, but the current form in which books are sold is hard to make a digital copy of (which is easier, ripping a cd or OCRing 500 or so pages and then spell checking it?)
So, absent digital copies of books that are without meta data, this project wouldn't be particularly useful. The only reason you'd want to search such a database is to find a book to buy. So let Amazon pay the $30k/yr and just search there.
Re:Cue::Cat (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at the SFDB [sfsite.com] for an example.
Readerware (Score:2, Interesting)
What's a Book? (Score:1, Funny)
just a bad joke! don't bother to flame me my submodernpostcomslashdotantireactionary freinds... I read bound printouts all the time.
bip ain't that great (Score:2, Informative)
Do you have any old books? BIP can be very unreliable when trying to find books published before 1980. Even still, BIP doesn't include information on all the different editions of a particular book, so your ISBN may not yield any results.
Speaking of no results, the search feature on BIP is incredibly unreliable. You can search for an ISBN, not find a book, then search for the title and come up with a book with the ISBN you just searched for. Try putting that ISBN back into the search box and it doesn't work! Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you don't.
Aside from searching for basic bibliographic information (title, author, illustrator if any, publisher info, etc.), pricing and availability information (available for most books in BIP's database) are not up-to-date as they report them to be. Many times we ordered books and the publisher told us the books were priced very differently from what BIP told us. Good luck getting an accurate estimate of how much your book collection is worth!
In the end, a book database like cddb's cd database or even better, like imdb's movie database including reviews and ratings would help people organize and maintain their private collections, and would help bookstore employees get their job done. If only the book database software our bookstore used had the ability to access an outside database like that!
Why do we need this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do we need this? Books are not searchable by nature so making it easier to find information about a book still leaves the issue of how do we get access to it. Making an eBook DB makes some sense. The ISBN numbering has been in effect for a long time and you can find any book reference that has a write up or reference on the net via Google. Thirdly the research community has oddles of system for referencing articles and papers.
hmmm, not searchable... (Score:2)
Did I read that right? You mean that title, author, subject, date, and category are not searchable fields? Its impossible to search the contents of a book for patterns? Its not easy to store/index a book's content in the database itself?
Perhaps you typed that wrong, or im misunderstanding you, but that statement sounds profoundly false.
You might want to look into project gutenberg [promo.net]. Because they do that. (If copy restrictions were shorter, they would have tons more stuff too)
Re:Why do we need this? (Score:2)
Would be good for small libraries worldwide (Score:5, Insightful)
My answer to that is the following: It would be nice to be able to lookup info about a book, given a small amount of information. Suppose you are a library and you want to catalogue books. Instead of having to type in all the information yourself you could just type in the ISBN and all the information get downloaded to the local catalogue.
I have had to make a database and enter data for a library and that would make life a lot easier!.
Re:Would be good for small libraries worldwide (Score:2, Informative)
Another source of Books in Print is through Gale Group [galegroup.com]. Many local libraries are purchasing access to the Gale Group databases (Books in Print, InfoTrac, etc) for their users. For instance, Virginia residents can type in the bar code number from their library card to get access to these databases from home.
I work in a library, but I'm not a librarian.
Re:Would be good for small libraries worldwide (Score:1, Interesting)
There are rules that need to be followed in order to maintain any sort of consistancy in record keeping. Remeber, a library isn't kept at all like your bookshelf.
Re:Would be good for small libraries worldwide (Score:2, Informative)
From the site...
At the center of OCLC services is the WorldCat database, which:
* Is the most consulted database in higher education
* Holds over 47 million cataloging records created by libraries around the world, with a new record added every 15 seconds
* Spans over 4,000 years of recorded knowledge with 400 languages represented
* Includes 840,637,829 location listings
I'm not a librarian (I'm the sysadmin... the technical services librarian just left for the day or I'd just ask her) but I work in one and I believe the records are all submitted by member libraries.
Anyway, go to the site for more info. I gotta get back to work.
http://www.oclc.com/about/
Re:Would be good for small libraries worldwide (Score:2)
Perhaps mentioning stuff like freedb isn't nearly as useful as mentioning IMDB [imdb.com]. IMDB is a really convenient thing if, say, you want to know who the great actors were in Attack of the The Eye Creatures [imdb.com] or what George Romero has directed [imdb.com].
Something like that for books would rock.
Watch Out... (Score:1)
would be nice (Score:1)
maybe there isn't a widespread interest in this, and that's why it never developed. alt.rec.movies (or whichever usenet group) imdb grew out of obviously filled a need for lotsa people...why didn't this happen with books? maybe it's too late to start now.
still, I'd be interested. as it stands now, people discuss movies, actors, etc in their blogs and link w/out thinking to imdb pages. for books, they end up linking to amazon (or B&N or, even more rearely, booksense). none of those sites give quite the same depth of info on a book as imdb does on a movie.
Re:would be nice (Score:2)
What's the Purpose? (Score:3, Interesting)
What purpose would such a database serve? CDDB/freedb, for example, allow us to automatically download the album titles automatically. Saves everyone a lot of tedious work. Obviously, you're not going to be doing this for books.
As a graduate student, I maintain a single text file of all articles and texts that I've ever referenced. Each entry has a unique identified which I use the UIDs in my own articles instead of typing the full reference. A shell script then updates then updates the references and BibTeX automatically generates the bibliography.
I could see where it could be useful to have a centralized resource that could automatically download those references - but only if it was quicker/easier than typing it in myself (and that only takes a couple of seconds).
What other purposes would such a database serve? How would it make my life easier?
Re:What's the Purpose? (Score:2)
I perfer small mom and pop shops, and would like to do things to help them.
A start (Score:3, Informative)
I personally would like to catalog my collection with a relatively decent amount of information, but who wants to sit there and type all that stuff in?
I agree that the trick would to keep a database from going to the Dark Side like CDDB did...
I would be interested in writing one (Score:1)
Re:I would be interested in writing one (Score:1)
Free Library Databases - and a protocol (Score:5, Informative)
For example, see mirlyn.web.lib.umich.edu and sign in as a guest and you can do all sorts of searches.
These libraries typically use the Z39.50 [biblio-tech.com] standard to connect. Z39.50 is a pretty decent standard, and it is widely used, standardized, and allows you to connect to many many databases.
Sounds like this could be what you're looking for.
Here are some useful links... (Score:5, Informative)
You can add entries here for ANYTHING with a standard UPC, so some books are in here. Very useful.
The Book-Scanning Project [eblong.com]
This guy wrote some Python scripts to convert UPC's to ISBN's - it can be done - and then feed them into Amazon's search engine. Very interesting, and he's already done it, so he has some experience.
For items out of copywrite... (Score:1)
Re:For items out of copywrite... (Score:5, Interesting)
is the official url IIRC
absolutely wonderful resource. they have a ton of books and the transcriptions are of pretty high quality--the have an excellent qa process.
Hey, Aussies! (Score:2)
And before you go bagging fullscale on the US; There are many books listed on the US site that are not on the British. We're not the worst! =)
http://www.gutenberg.net.au [gutenberg.net.au]
Even More Interesting Application (Score:1)
What would really be great is having every book ever written on the internet in full-text (not just a summary), stored in a database (like google does for webpages.). Just imagine being able to type in a search phrase and being able to search the text of every book that was ever printed.
I wonder about the possibility of this based on:1. storage space
2. database efficiency for all that information
3. most importantly: copyright laws.
Re:Even More Interesting Application (Score:1)
Anonymous Coward, huh? (Score:2)
What about freedb? (Score:2)
--Ben
Automated spine recognition? (Score:1)
If such a database also had spine/cover info that let's a program do automated recognition, this would be possible. Then you could put them all up for sale. Or you could look up a book without having to keep your bookcase organized.
The One Major Issue (Score:1)
Bookcrossing.com (Score:2, Interesting)
I use it, I like it.
feed this page an isbn, get XML out (Score:5, Informative)
The important thing is it outputs XML, so if you want to build an interface to it for your own application, you can. Its not a 100% complete database, but it should give you basic information on any book available.
I wrote this specifically for external search engines back when XML was the new hot thing. Funny thing is, the sites that search us usually want an FTP data feed, so this doesn't really get used much. But again, feel free(be reasonable if you use a bot - maybe limit your bot to a search every 5-10 seconds, please).
Re:feed this page an isbn, get XML out (Score:2)
Re:feed this page an isbn, get XML out (Score:2)
Re:feed this page an isbn, get XML out (Score:2)
Though it still seems like you ought to be able to obtain an authoritative database of ISBN numbers. I couldn't find one last time I looked, though.
Writing my own (Score:2, Interesting)
1) I don't have enough space in my tiny room to fit all my books into bookcases, but with the db I can put some books in boxes in the closet and easily find out in which box a certain book is.
2) I want my books sorted according to a standard classification system but still be able to have them in my own way in the bookcase. Currently I use a heavily outdated (1987) Swedish classification system that the kind folks at my school library lent me. So I'll definitely take look at the Dewey Decimal system [tnrdlib.bc.ca] mentioned earlier.
3) I have books in several languages and with a db I can have the same kind of information on different books in different languages in the same place. Thus I don't have to look up the romanization for the Kanji (Chinese charachters in Japanese) more than once. But of course it will store the original Kanji-titles as well.
4) I can easily create lists of books that I want to buy and, that friends have borrowed from me or books that I have borrowed.
When it's finished I want it to handle 2-bit languages in a nice way, be compliant with existing standards for book classification, both Swedish and international, allow for easy list creation and have a nice interface.
Use Z39.50 (Score:1, Informative)
Project Gutenberg (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Project Gutenberg (Score:2)
Forget CDDB/Cue::Cat - think IMDB (Score:2)
But you could do some pretty interesting stuff with an IMDB-style book database, at least for fiction. I'm picturing entries for fictional characters and locations, along with birth and death dates, even user-moderated (Wiki?) biographical sketches where available, cross-referenced by author. Instant encyclopedia of Arkham/Castle Rock... cool!
But even outside of a single author's oeuvre, there would be great cross referencing stuff you could do.
Say I read and really liked a detective novel that takes place in Los Angeles in the 1940's.
It would be pretty cool to have a reliable database where I could plug in the ISBN of the book I just read, and get a cross-referenced list of other books set in the same time/place/genre - without the busy, sales-oriented "You might also like" mess you get from a site like Amazon.
Maybe include a user comments section, if there's some sort of meta-moderation available - point-missing/inane/poorly written Amazon user reviews instantly send me into a blind rage
-Oh, and you could do automated metasearches with the new Google API, too
Actually, there's work being done on one... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't exclude business (Score:2)
The alternative is to have the project run out of money, and be bought, probably by a business, and then commercialized anyway.
The best projects will always be those that balance the commercial aspects with the public interest aspects.
It is an excellent idea, however.
Read this (Score:2)
I have one in development right now... (Score:3, Informative)
It hadn't really occurred to me that others might like access to this kind of data as well.
Seriously, is there enough interest that it might be worth the effort to add a request interface that returned an XML object of the data that I have? Would others contribute to it?
I currently have 294,652 completed entries in my database. I'm out of work and bored, and I'll make it publicly accessible if I get some feeback indicating that it would be worth the effort.
-Chris
Re:I have one in development right now... (Score:2)
My post isn't generating much interest though, so I'll probably just keep my database private and not have to worry about legal issues.
-Chris
Exchange formats and common pools for free data (Score:2)
Built one (Score:2)
My objective was to do a quick keyword search on a list of 100,000 records from several different sources. Generally I have one line per book, and while some of the indices provide more information that is all I use.
I didn't want to spend the time to do a real database job and I wanted to use Perl regular expressions to do a quick keyword search within author and title text. So I keep recent indices next to the search program compressed variously with zip, gzip, or bzip2. I can direct the system to make a single text file which contains the unpacked text all appended together and compressed again. It will also list stats for each file.
Its main function is to wait for a keyword to be typed in, and it will immediately (PIII/450MHz Linux Inspiron 7.5K) display a numbered list of matching books, in alphabetical order grouped by indice. You can then select certain numbers from the list, or reduce the number of records by adding more keywords. This is sufficent for me and has helped me discover unknown titles and new authors because of its way of narrowing down on information. Perhaps if I had more structured files I would have used Perl's BoulderIO which has solved huger problems of library science in merging genome data files, see bio.perl.org.
Re:Does anyone know of a sports statistics databas (Score:2)
Re:*Here's* why we need this. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm working on a catalog of my books (and my etexts, and my tens of thousands of physical and digitized sound recordings, and small quantities of miscellaneous other media -- I'm not really into video). Indeed, bibliography is an interest of mine, and I've long had ideas for very nontraditional, loosely-structured, multiply-hierarchical hypertextual catalogs. I've been implementing small parts of these ideas for over ten years.
But actually getting any reasonable fraction of my library into a database strikes me, on even my most optimistic days, as be a Herculean task. It's hard to get started, because when I do have any free time, I prefer actually reading the books to cataloguing them. Oh, when I actually get out of postdoctoral research hell and get a real job, I might have enough money to hire someone to do data entry (then again, I'm likely to want to spend the extra money on books -- fortunately I just got married and my wife might act as a braking force against that tendency).
With a little luck, I'll have the structural framework for my catalog coded in a year or two. But actually getting the data into a database will be a huge task, and one which my CueCat (or the more professional barcode scanners I recently dumpster-dived) will hardly begin to help with. (Only comparatively-recently published books have bar codes, and not even all of them).
A unified catalog with all the records from Library of Congress, Books in Print, and university/state libraries around the world would be fantastic, though, if only to "fill in the blanks" with a minimum of manual entry for any given book. (I do have access through my university to some things that help, though, the unified bibliographical catalogs that librarians use. But I have to write glue code to automate access to them, and that's a pain in the butt).
Why do I want to catalogue my library? Well, there are a couple of reasons. The main one is probably that I want to build the hypertextual database that I alluded to above. When I read books, I make notes (mentally or otherwise). The notes usually make reference to other books. It would be nice to record these notes in the database; eventually it would be a web reflecting what I've thought about various books throughout time. I'm a fairly disorganized person, and if I just jot something down somewhere I'll lose track of it. And if I try to keep it all in mind, I'll inevitably start to forget.
Being disorganized also justifies a catalog on purely practical terms -- it would be nice to know for sure, when for instance I see a book that I've already read and liked in a used bookstore, whether I already have the book (in which case I certainly don't want a duplicate), or read it somewhere else (in which case I certainly do want to buy it). And, since my books are not shelved according to any rational system, a catalog might help me find them (though I don't usually have much trouble with this). Note that I have no intention of significantly rationalizing the shelving even if I do catalogue the books. I'm much more likely to simply record my idiosyncratic locations in the database.
A final reason for cataloguing is that my collection is fairly comprehensive in a few specialized areas and I definitely do have a few books, at least, that would be very hard to find in this country. I'd be willing to lend out such books to (trustworthy) people. But people need to be able to find out that I have the books, and I need to be able to keep track of any loans as I'd be loath to lose even a single book. A catalog would be absolutely indispensable for this.
Kiscica