Cataloging physical books

[Incognitus]

I've been looking for a good way to catalog my physical books, without resorting to writing my own app. I would've done that in the past, but who has the time these days. I'm always looking for self hosted (ie, written in PHP or something similar) so I can host it on my own server. Most of the websites (Goodreads) kind of sucks for straight inventory.

There are some library systems (Koha), but there's no docker images, which kind of sucks. I'd likely want to host this on my Synology, so I'm trying to avoid building a server.

Anyways, I was wondering how everyone inventories their physical books.

 

[SkullTraill]

Have you considered Omeka?

 

[Incognitus]

Wow, how'd I miss that one! Even has a docker available. I'm going to give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[SkullTraill]

Wow, how'd I miss that one! Even has a docker available. I'm going to give that a try. Thanks for the suggestion!

Yeah figured it's almost exactly what you need. Looking into using it for the WF library at some point.

 

[Incognitus]

I think Omeka might be overkill. That's a powerful piece of software. No official dockers, and a lot of them are old versions. I'm looking more for something like Calibre, just for cataloging physical books instead of ebooks. Something where if I go to a book store and see book, I have an inventory list I can easily check to avoid double buys. Omeka is awesome, but it's scope is pretty huge.

I want something like BookBuddy, which would be perfect (even tho it's not self hosted). $4.99 isn't bad, but the Mac version requires a Mac with M1 chip. That seems like a really stupid requirement since Mac's with those chips are so new. I might just suffer with the IOS version. I'd be looking at the iPhone app most of the time anyways.

 

[SkullTraill]

I think Omeka might be overkill. That's a powerful piece of software. No official dockers, and a lot of them are old versions. I'm looking more for something like Calibre, just for cataloging physical books instead of ebooks. Something where if I go to a book store and see book, I have an inventory list I can easily check to avoid double buys. Omeka is awesome, but it's scope is pretty huge.

I want something like BookBuddy, which would be perfect (even tho it's not self hosted). $4.99 isn't bad, but the Mac version requires a Mac with M1 chip. That seems like a really stupid requirement since Mac's with those chips are so new. I might just suffer with the IOS version. I'd be looking at the iPhone app most of the time anyways.

True. Omeka is somewhat enterprise/gallery/library oriented in that it's a full suite for cataloging.

You could sort of construct your own cataloging system using generic tools like Google Sheets or Obsidian Notes or Notion. It's not gonna flow like a purpose-built app, but they are cross platform, and easy to use. With google sheets, I think you could even implement a sheet for catalog entry/insertion and a sheet for searching the list.

Beyond that, I did a quick google and found this:

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Also, I know of 2 library management softwares:

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But they're just as bloated as Omeka and probably not even as good.

On that note though, look at:

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Also, looking at Calibre, it seems you can actually use it to manage/store info about physical books not just ebooks.

Here's some more resources too:

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[Incognitus]

Thanks Skull! I use Calibre (with a couple calibre-web dockers) for ebooks, but I honestly hate the calibre app interface. Someone needs some UI training! I'll report back with whatever I end up finding that makes things easy, in case anyone else is interested.

 

[Incognitus]

I ended up looking at BookBuddy and Libib. Both allow some amount of free items in your libraries. BookBuddy I think allows 50 and Libib allows 5000.

BookBuddy is pretty much exactly what I want. You can add books manual, by ISBN, scanning a barcode if the book has one, or search online. It’s a one time $4.99 charge for Pro to make it unlimited. The big drawback is the Mac version requires a M1 Mac. Makes no sense to me. There’s no reason they should be restricting their user base like that. I actually sent them an email asking what this is about, but no response yet. There is no website access to your library. The app has CSV import/export capabilities.

Libib looked so promising. The app is limited. You can only add books in the app by scanning a barcode (which most of my older books don’t have) or adding manually. The same account you can use on their website, and they even give you a custom URL to share your libraries. The website allows you to add books by barcode, ISBN, search online or manual. Except… the free website account has an annoying Feed window taking up the right side of the page. You have to upgrade to a pay account to get rid of it and this is $10/mo. No thanks! I’m probably being nitpick, but that feed window, and the app being limited to barcode or manual, turned me right off. Not sure if it has import/export. Probably, tho.

So I think I’m going with BookBuddy. I always have my phone with me in a bookstore and it does exactly what I want.

 

[Incognitus]

Last night I put around 40 books in BookBuddy and I have to say the app works great. Just using the free version for now and it has an impressive amount of features. Not only can you add books by multiple methods (scan barcode, searcher ISBN, search online for title, etc), it has other features such as exporting your library to CSV, PDF and HTML. It can import. The other nice thing is this is LOCAL. You're not sending your data to some server somewhere. By default, your library is on your device (phone, tablet, etc). You can sync the database to iCloud (on Apple devices) so you use the same database on multiple devices. You can sync the DB to dropbox and other services.

I have no complaints. For over 50 books it's $4.99, but that's a one time fee. Most apps with similar features are either $9.99 or even $9.99/mo.

 

[SkullTraill]

Last night I put around 40 books in BookBuddy and I have to say the app works great. Just using the free version for now and it has an impressive amount of features. Not only can you add books by multiple methods (scan barcode, searcher ISBN, search online for title, etc), it has other features such as exporting your library to CSV, PDF and HTML. It can import. The other nice thing is this is LOCAL. You're not sending your data to some server somewhere. By default, your library is on your device (phone, tablet, etc). You can sync the database to iCloud (on Apple devices) so you use the same database on multiple devices. You can sync the DB to dropbox and other services.

I have no complaints. For over 50 books it's $4.99, but that's a one time fee. Most apps with similar features are either $9.99 or even $9.99/mo.

Nice!