I have a lot of books, probably far too many and certainly far too many for me to remember what all I have. I often think it would be helpful if I could search a database of my books when I’m checking to see if I have something. There are some sites online where you can do this with a small collection for free or pay to catalog a larger collection but I have two problems with that. First, I don’t like trusting comapnies with my data which could be sut off at any time. Second, I have this thing about doing it myself and using open source software. I keep meaning to write a simple PHP/mySQL program to handle this but just have too many similar PHP/mySQL projects that I need to work on first.
I recently came across some open source software that would provide a good atarting point for such a system. Home Library seems to be just what I’m looking for, though it may be a bit immature. I’m going to be keeping my eye on this as I could use somthing to catalog all my DVDs and videotapes as well. I was also pointed towards the bibliophile project at sourceforge. While not a final product itself they have a number of links to catalog like programs on the projects page. While these are more geared towards organizing references for papers they are useful in their own right and apparently might be useful as catalogging software too.
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