Book Tracking

[nickodemos]

I have always been into books. I am between 3-4000 read books so far in my life. During this time I have tried on multiple occasions to try and track down everything I have read with various levels of success.

Of the many programs out there they really do not do simple tracking very well. Some start out well and die. Some just don't have a clue. Others are kitchen sink varieties and the idea gets lost.

After using mousers epCheck program I was thinking that if something along the lines of this could be had it would be great.

Simple and basic program that can collect data from a stable website like worldcat and keep relevant information at hand.

Tabs for author, series, name, and year.

So far there is not alot out there. Many just fall short. Calibre does not come close since as you add books it gets unwieldy. Use of a spreadsheet is time consuming without out import.

I do not want online since as we have seen over the years things change or they get bought out. Or worse they go offline and all data is lost.

Dreaming but if anyone has an idea it would be great to hear of it. And I already read everything in this forum and others, so most things you might post I probably already looked and and dismissed. So I would imagine it would have to be a hard to find program. Also freeware.

[mouser]

After using mousers epCheck program..

Much as I'd like to take credit for epCheck, it was written by DC member Skwire.

[MilesAhead]

@nickodemos I would post on the Coding Snacks.  It sounds like something Skwire may be interested in implementing.

[Ath]

For collections of several varieties, Datacrow is often used, it has several templates leaning in that direction, and a highly optimized database back-end.

[dr_andus]

Simple and basic program that can collect data from a stable website like worldcat and keep relevant information at hand.

Check out Zotero, including its Firefox add-on, which allows you to add books from Amazon with one click. There is also a desktop client.

[nickodemos]

Zotero is nice for tracking information I need to keep track of for writing papers but not what is needed for book tracking.

DataCrow has improved greatly since I first tried it many years ago. Playing with it just now I remember the heavy demand that it has on java usage. Runs very slow on my computer and I can imagine only will get worse as the DB builds.

Color me an idiot for thinking about one of mouser's program while writing about Skwire's epCheck.

I'll post in coding snacks and see what bites.

[40hz]

The only real challenge is having an app to grab book data and artwork from Amazon (or other sources) via an API. Once that data is pulled over and put in a tab-delimited file, it can be easily imported into almost anything.

If it's just a locally hosted Windows-native tracking database that's wanted, there's easily a half dozen DBMS apps (i.e. Access, et al) that will let you set one up very easily.

[Vurbal]

When I was looking for Windows ebook readers some weeks back it occurred to me that even for ebook management it would be generally preferable if the search and cataloging functionality came from a standalone component.

That's obviously not the same thing we're talking about here. However it seems likely using something like the Calibre through an API would at least be a logical jumping off point if you wanted to develop what nickodemos described. That's assuming something suitable doesn't already exist, but I don't imagine it does.

[nickodemos]

The only real challenge is having an app to grab book data and artwork from Amazon (or other sources) via an API. Once that data is pulled over and put in a tab-delimited file, it can be easily imported into almost anything.

If it's just a locally hosted Windows-native tracking database that's wanted, there's easily a half dozen DBMS apps (i.e. Access, et al) that will let you set one up very easily.

Essentially yes. But it would be nice if the front end was more than just a data retriever. It would be nice if possible that one could easily flip between title/authors name/series name/maybe even year.

I am doing an all-niter on a lab nurse exam and a lecture tomorrow so will try to give a dummy upped version of an interface later this week.