The books I scan in an evening

[rbandrews]

So I bought Delicious Library.

I've scanned all the books except graphic novels and paperbacks. This is sort of like saying I've scaled all of Everest except the last 29,000 feet, but it's enough to give me a feel for the program itself.

Scanning with an iSight is pretty badass. You put a bar code in front of it, and it beeps, then a second or two later, speaks the title and author aloud. So you grab a book, wave it in front of the computer until it beeps, reshelve it while listening to how badly /usr/bin/say mangles the title, repeat until you run out of books or die. I'll probably die first.

This is how it works about 80% of the time for my collection. However, I have a deep and abiding love for pulp Sci-Fi, particularly short story anthologies. These pre-date barcodes by about three decades, minimum. So the actual process is grab a stack of books, make an "un-scannable artifacts of yore" pile next to the laptop, and then proceed. After every shelf, sit down and start typing.

So what's the payoff from this? Well, I get to search my collection. Since it's totally unsorted, this is kind of a big deal. I have actually bought books again because I couldn't find my old one. I can also publish it to the web, and I think there might be an iPhone app or something.

Edit: Protip: mass-market paperbacks, which are the bulk of my collection, have two barcodes on them (or none at all). There's the one on the back, like every other book, and the one in the inside front cover. Only the inside front cover one works. If you scan the one on the back, you'll get some Tae-Bo DVD, or Larry Niven's Ringworld. Which may have been somewhat useful, since I do own like four copies of Ringworld.

Comments

[diadelphous.livejournal.com]

I have to say, this sounds really super cool.

And if you can publish it to the web, you'll have like an online library catelog! AWESOME.

[rbandrews]

You've gotta see it when you come over, it's amazing. I can probably give you a copy too, so you can scan your stuff.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

If I had known you were scanning mass markets, I would have warned you about the barcode thing. I don't even really know why there's one on the back cover - even bookstores use the one on the inside cover which is a pain in the ass when someone is buying a dozen romance novels at a time.

[rbandrews]

I only decided to last night, while pondering fun things to do with my new Macbook.

What annoys me isn't that the back barcode doesn't scan, it's that it DOES scan, just to the wrong item! They could at least have had the decency to use a null item for the barcode on the back.

[vond.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the presence of two different barcodes, with one on the front cover, has to do with "destroying" unsold books by removing the covers? Like maybe if law enforcement recovers a whole bunch of "destroyed" books the publishers can quickly inventory them, but that's not the "real" barcode? Just trying to put the pieces together for something that otherwise makes zero sense.