Books

I read a fair number of books.  I buy even more (with every intention of reading them).  Several years ago, I started looking for some software to catalog my books.  The best Mac program I could find was Books.

Books is managed by a software house called Audacious Software that still offers Books but has stopped development of future versions of the program in favor of something else they are working on called Codex.  But if you don't want to wait, you can still download Books at their website.  I find the software to be simple to use and stabile.

One of the nice things about Books is that you can simply enter a book's ISBN number and the software will go out to Amazon's servers and pick up all the metadata (author, title, cover art, even a summary) and bring it back to the program.  You can add your own comments on what you thought of the book, give it a star-rating, and even manage your collection as a lending library.  You can also import and export collections.  I have exported a database to Bento 3 which I then synced with Bento 3 on the iPod so that I have a portable version of my database.  You can get an idea of the interface below:

Books can handle several databases so I have one for Books Read and another for Technology Books.  It's a handy way to keep track of your collections.

I would not usually recommend software that is no longer being developed but this seems stabile and the developer is still there for questions.  You might want to think about alternatives such as Bento 3 which I have already mentioned.  Bento 3 is fully-supported commercial software from Filemaker so it is going to be around for awhile.  But if you want some freeware, Books is a good way to go.  If you have and iPod Touch, I have seen an app for that platform that is a book database but I can't imagine entering all the data on the tiny keyboard.

[By the way, if you have friends with a Mac (obviously smart people), feel free to share this blog link with them.]