A Gentle Madness

I have almost finished a project that I've been working on for at least a year. I finally found a great piece of software that allows me to record all of the books that I own. It’s designed for use on a PDA and called BookBag Plus (Ver. 4.1.0) by WakefieldSoft, LLC.

I can type in the ISBN number or the title and the software goes onto the internet, finds the book, downloads its title, author, publisher, publication date, the number of pages, the format (hardback, paperback, audiobook, etc.) and the current selling price. It will also download an image of the book, if it is available.

The software has both a PDA and a desktop component which allows you to add the information via a PC or laptop. This makes the initial input so much easier than trying to write it all via the PDA.

The software also allows you to import records (comma delimited or tab delimited) from other sources, which was a god send since I had tried to do this project with another piece of software that crashed and burned.

I've probably catalogued 2/3 of my collection and have 430 books on record at this point.

I chose to put the records on my PDA so that I can avoid buying duplicate books when shopping. I’ve bought duplicates way too many times in the past and as much as I love my books, I don’t need more than one copy.