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V12 2009 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 12, Number 8, February 22, 2009, Article 14

I'd like to thank Doug Mudd and Scott Semans for their replies to my inquiry about making an inventory for my library. I have Excel and use that for my coin inventory. The Filemaker Pro sounds interesting, too, along with the provided categories for book descriptions. I'll discuss this with Diane (wife and computer person) and with a friend looking to catalog his library.

I have found this software package to be invaluable in organizing my numismatic book collection: www.collectorz.com/book/

In terms of customization, it required nothing. They cover everything from book look-up including support for bar code reader input. It can look books up using a extensive source list (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Libraries, etc). It can literally track anything you can think of including price, condition, storing your own book images. Using a spreadsheet is like living in the dark ages for me. Anyone with a serious collection should look into this.

And no, I don't work for the company but I do work in the commercial software sector so I appreciate well written software.

I have to agree that these days, Computing in the Cloud is the way to go if you can find a service that meets your needs. For example, I use Flickr to store the E-Sylum photo archive and SugarSync to automatically sync and back up my home and laptop computers. Collectorz does look like a tool worth investigating, particularly for those wishing to track a collection of recently published titles (it's not fully "in the Cloud" - users do have to download a software to their computers).

The site has a feature where users can search for book titles in a large database, then add titles to their own listing with the click of a button. I tried this using the prolific Dave Bowers as an example. The system found 47 titles from 1966 through 2008.

That's a great way to jumpstart library listing, but the database is far from complete for the subject of numismatics. The tool allows users to add their own titles manually to fill in the blanks. That's more work of course, but the jumpstart gives you a big leg up. Again, with Collectorz this works mainly with recently published works having an ISBN number. -Editor