Brown paper packages tied up with strings...

UPDATE: The Readerware Mobile app is now happily installed on my Android devices, complete with a bar code scanner. Boom, baby!

Is there a nicer smell than a bookstore? Freshly baked cookies, maybe? My ultimate goal in life is to own a tiny, out-of-the-way bookshop heaped to the ceilings with books. And I might put in an old-school oven so that I can bake batches of chocolate chip cookies in between customers. I've been a serious book collector since childhood. And by serious book collector I don't mean that I own a 1st edition Dickens in mint condition. I mean that I have so many books that I could probably build a rather large house from them. Oooo! A house with books for walls. That sounds brilliant.

I'm trying to pass on my love of books to The Spawn. We go on book hunting excursions at least once per week. Oddly, I don't really use the library. I like owning my books. I get really vexed and out of sorts when I have to return a book, and libraries frown upon people stealing their books (to which I can relate) so I don't really frequent them. Unless they are having a book sale. Now that's a stand-in-line-for-the-doors-to-open occasion.

In my many years of book hunting, I've often wished for a system of organization. I find myself buying multiples of books because I can't remember what I already own. Then I found Readerware. I am not being paid to praise this software. I simply must rave about a piece of software that allows me to track my collection in a way that makes me feel truly satisfied.

The Nitty Gritty: I paid $57.41 for the Readerware Books Mobile Edition with a CueCat USB barcode reader. I plug in my CueCat, scan the ISBN barcodes on my books, and Readerware imports information from whichever sources I select (Amazon, Library of Congress, etc.) and adds the selection to my library. It makes me feel like a librarian without the $60,000 Library Sciences Master's degree. I can set up categories such as genre, condition, price, edition, and more. I can create Want Lists. If a book has no barcode, I can look up the ISBN or title on Amazon, then drag and drop the Amazon item detail page into Readerware and it will auto-import into my library! Winner, winner, chicken, dinner.

 

There is also Readerware software to track your Music and Video libraries. My only gripe about Readerware is that the mobile app is only available for iOS devices and I'm a die-hard Android user. The software is so good it made me seriously consider buying an iPhone. I cannot make you understand the magnitude of that statement, just know that I loathe and despise the proprietary nature of iTunes and would have serious trouble sleeping at night if I were to make the switch to iAnything. So I'm going to give them a few more months to come out with an Android app before I step off that cliff into the Apple oblivion. In the meantime, I keep a Google Keep checklist of my Wants and Needs, which helps to cut back on multiples.