Cataloging a relatives book collection

Academic

Bit of a strange one.......an academic relative has just passed away and he had expressed a desire that his book collection (mainly scientific and physics-related books) be given to a good home. I have a couple of days to attempt to catalogue as many of these books as possible.

I'd like to use a barcode scanner (or something similar) and appropriate software to create a catalogue. I have access to a laptop (and an ipad) and had hoped to use the ISBN of each book rather than have to labouriously type in the title, etc.

I've searched on Google and have seen this software but would welcome any advice or recommendations.

agrinnall

That certainly looks like it'll do what you want, although I haven't used it. My question would be why you think it's worth the effort to do it if you're just going to give the books away anyway? Would it not be simpler to contact your nearest university with a science department (or if your relative was actually an Academic, then perhaps the university where they previously worked) to ask them to come and take the lot? Any university will have a Library Management System that will be able to catalogue the collection straight into its database.

Academic

Agrinnall, thanks for your response.

I do intend to contact several university libraries but I know from personal experience that space is at a premium in most libraries and many have been 'removing' books rather than acquiring them. Also, my thinking is that they would be more likely to take the book collection if they know exactly what they are getting rather than 'could you please collect 30 boxes of books....'.

Ultimately we'll need to dispose of the books and if I have a database then this will facilitate proper disposal.

clemmatis

OK, that software's cheap. I had a program called NotaBene that will now, among other things, construct a listing from a scanned ISBN number, and will do a lot more; but it isn't cheap. Here's the intro. to the new version

http://www.notabene.com/nbvideo/archiva/archiva-intro.htm

scottishperson2

Academic wrote: »

I've searched on Google and have seen this software but would welcome any advice or recommendations.

It does the job, and (having used the dvd collector version) has many a print option, which I assume is what you ultimately want.

NotSoWise

I have just gone and bought the book catalogue one after downloading it for free trial.

Its great! So easy with a good on-line manual. I too am using it to catalogue deceased husband's extensive book collection with a view to donating sports and sports history books to university - so much easier if can give a printout and know where the books are (location and user defined fields to record this stuff).

Getting quite obsessive though with cataloguing the SF books.

In total probably have 2k of books.

NotSoWise

Does anybody know of a football programme catolguing s/w?