personal libraries

There is a great post on Hackito Ergo Sum about how they set up their personal library system, from barcode readers to cataloging to shelving. They went with Readerware, a reasonably well-known desktop program.

It's a shame they never encountered LibraryThing in their research. I knew about LibraryThing but didn't do anything with it until the time came to pack up our books to more to our new house in 2006. In late December 2005 I signed up and by mid-February 2006 I had all of our over 2,000 books cataloged, tagged, and packed without the use of a barcode reader (although I do have an original cuecat that Wired shipped out as a subscriber benefit sometime in the 90s, still in its original box). Like them, I have older books without ISBNs and foreign imprints. Many of the foreign imprints I found through non-US library catalogs. I had to manually enter some items, but that was not a challenge.

I guess I'm just a shill for LibraryThing.