Author Archives: Lisa @ Me & My House

What can an book cataloging app do for you? As I continue my series on cataloging your home library, today we’re continuing to look at features that aren’t as common on other library cataloging apps, and are reasons I chose Bookpedia. (It is only for Mac computers. Look for a similar PC option if you aren’t blessed to own a Mac.)

Today we look at adding ebooks, audiobooks, and other formats–and related to that importing from other book cataloging apps.

1) Add ebooks. Many of the apps don’t have a auto add feature for ebooks. If the books don’t have an ISBN, you have to add them manually. Although I have a free ebook organizing app (Calibre), I really wanted to be able to add my ebooks to my regular library cataloging app, so all my books would be listed in one place.

With Bookpedia, ebooks that are in epub or pdf format that are on your computer can be dragged onto the app icon and they are automatically added to your library, format, image and all–including a link to the book on your computer to open the book up. Now that’s handy!

More details: After downloading an ebook to your computer, move it to the location you will be storing it on your computer (i.e. out of your Downloads folder and to an appropriate folder.) Then drag it to the Bookpedia icon on your Dock. When you add ebooks this way, a link is added to their entry, when clicked on the ebook is opened within Bookpedia. A folder called Imported PDFs (or whatever format) will be created. Finish any personal editing you want to do for the book(s), then click the gear at the bottom to “Include this Collection in Library”. After it’s in your main library you can delete the Import folder.

Ebooks in mobi /azw (for Kindle) can’t be added by this drag and drop, you can add them by copying the ASIN from Amazon and pasting into the search feature–or using a 2 step process (see Import below).

More details: After adding the book that you got from Amazon, if you have the Kindle app on your computer, sync it to add your new books. Then go to your Kindle Content folder on your computer and drag the file (named by ASIN) to the Links tab for that book on Bookpedia. When you click on the link it will open the book in your Kindle app. (In order to find your Content folder, you’ll need to change the location of the Content folder, so it isn’t hidden, in the Kindle app Preferences.)

If you have multiple copies of the same ebooks, that you would like to keep because they are in different formats (or whatever other reason), you can add the Links to each book in one entry, and delete the other entries. Each of these links will be listed in the Details for the book, and you can click on whichever you’d like to read. Tip! Name the links something helpful, such as [Book Name] (epub), [Book Name] (mobi), etc.

2) Audiobooks. I also wanted my audiobooks cataloged in the same place with my books, so I could have a complete list with all my book formats to carry with me everywhere. Auto adding would be a huge plus! Thank you Bookpedia.

More details: With Bookpedia, I was able to export my Audiobooks (from iTunes, by choosing Audiobooks, then Export Playlist, in XML format.) Then Import Collection into Bookpedia. It will import a new folder. Check and make any corrections or additions. (I actually did a bit of clean up before I exported, made sure authors names were consistent, etc.) Sections of audiobooks might be imported separately. To edit to have them all listed together (as 1 book) go to your iTunes Music > Audiobooks folder and for each audiobook, drag the links for each part into the Links tab of the first section of the book. You can then delete the extra listings (of the individual parts). Once all is edited as you desire, click the gear and add the Collection to your Library (as with ebooks above).

If you have other Audiobooks, not listed in the Audiobook folder in iTunes, just make a playlist of what you want and export from iTunes, then import into Bookpedia, as above.

3) Import. Books, Ebooks, Audiobooks. If you already have books that you’ve begun to catalog, you don’t want to begin back at square one. That’s where I was at when I got Bookpedia. I’d already been cataloging for several years with Booxter for my physical books, and Calibre for my ebooks, and of course my Audiobooks were in iTunes. I had tried importing into other apps–they didn’t work so well. Bookpedia did! I was able to import all of these easily into Bookpedia.

More details: If you have many ebooks already cataloged in Calibre, (which you can add mobi/azw format to by dragging and dropping,) you can export from Calibre in CSV format, and import into Bookpedia.

From Booxter, I exported as XML and exported the Images in a separate file. But they all imported in together great. I did have 1 glitch. The date I purchased the books did not import. I don’t know what I did wrong.

4) Other formats. We also use several educational DVDs and CDs. Since many do not have ISBN numbers, this is another time that searching/adding by ASIN or keywords can save you a lot of manual adding. Like ebooks and audiobooks, you can add direct Links to the files on your computer.

Now that your books–of all formats–are added, we’ll take a look at Viewing and Organizing your books next time.

If you have a library cataloging app, do you have all your various book formats added to it?

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What can an book cataloging app do for you? As I continue my series on cataloging your home library, today we’re going to begin looking at features. Although every app will have different features, and you shouldn’t expect to find all expanded features on a free or very cheap app, here are some of the features that are commonly found on many of the library cataloging apps for computers – and some areas where I believe Bookpedia goes above and beyond.

Adding Books

1) Add books automatically. Ability to add books by just typing in or scanning the ISBN number/barcode. When you enter the ISBN or Library of Congress number, the app will search the internet and bring up the information found for the book. It will fill in title, author, price, publisher, format, and other general information. Perhaps genre, subjects, summary, tags, etc.

With Bookpedia you are able to not only search by ISBN or LCC, but also by ASIN or even just keywords. You can set for yourself, which order you’d like online sites searched. When using keywords (or even complete title and author) you will get a list of many possibilities (some may be far from what book you’re looking for–so I wouldn’t set the Preferences for adding first entry automatically, but it does great expand your search abilities.) You can use various search limiters to further refine your searches.   Using ASIN numbers is very helpful for automatically adding ebooks, DVD’s or other formats that don’t have ISBN numbers, without having to sort through keyword results. If added through the search feature, Bookpedia will also add a URL of where the book is found/was added from.

2) Add books manually. For old, obscure or others without ISBN or other searchable info, you can type all the info in by hand. This of course is the harder way, but for those antique books, it’s great that you can add everything you need on your own.

With Bookpedia the keyword search may help you have far fewer manual adds.

3) Add personal information. Even for books for which general info is added automatically, you are able to add personal information. Where and when you bought the book, how much you paid, where the book is located, condition, rating, when you last read it, other notes and comments, and if you have lent it out.

With Bookpedia, you can also add custom fields for any other info you’d like, as well as info if you are selling the book. You can even add books you haven’t bought yet–on your Wish List. An automatic smartlist is created for Borrowed and Wish List. If you’d like, Bookpedia will also send a reminder email automatically to those who have borrowed your books, when they are due.

Editing multiple entries can be a helpful timesaver in many instances, such as when you purchase several books at once from the same place. After adding the general info for each book, select them all and choose edit, add the information that is common to all and save.

4) Add images. If you’ve added your books by ISBN, it will have added an image added if there was one at the site it pulled the book info from. If not, you can add an image from another source, either dragging or copying and pasting from either your computer or the internet.

With Bookpedia you can also search Google images from within the app. I have found so many images this way that didn’t come up in the regular search. Also, since this is a built in brower, if I know where I got the book or where it may be available, I can go to that site within this search and find the image there. This has been super helpful for me. Bookpedia also has the ability to capture an image with your computer’s built in camera.

These are the basics for adding books. In the next part of this series we’ll look at adding other things, such as ebooks, DVD’s, CD’s and Audiobooks.

If you have a Library Cataloging app, what features for adding books do you like best?

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If you read last week’s article (the beginning of this series), and followed the link in it, you know that I think a library cataloging app/program is the way to go for cataloging your home library, large or small. I’ve been using Booxter for several years, and haven’t been displeased with it, but have desired a little more flexibility and customization. Last year I began looking, and testing out other apps. I tried several different ones, from free to more-than-I-really-wanted-to-spend. I also hoped to find one that would be a good fit for both Mac and Windows users.

Although I think Book Collector may be a good one for that, it is not what I went with. Since most of my library was already cataloged, I wanted an app that would easily import the work I’d already done. I did not want to have to start from scratch to enter my 2000+ physical books, plus another close to a couple thousand more in other formats. Book Collector, did not import well with Mac. For you that are starting from scratch anyhow, or have a Windows computer instead of Mac, you may want to begin looking there. It appears to have great features, and they were very helpful in answering questions, but I couldn’t try it out much for my situation. If you have Windows, that’s the best I can tell you about. If you have a Mac though, don’t jump too fast there. Use their free trial, if you’d like, but don’t buy till you take a look at what I did get.

So what did I pick? Bookpedia. Look for my next article to see why–and what features you may want to look for in a cataloging app.

Do you already have a cataloging system for your home library? If so, what do you use?

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