Librarian Pro is a program for both Windows and Macintosh that helps you manage your collection of books, magazines, games, CDs, software titles, movies, and more. It helps you inventory and retrieve information quickly. It has labor-saving abilities, even the ability to use a barcode scanner.
Remember when you first heard of home computers? The early reports of these wonderful new devices promised to keep track of your recipes, your household inventory, and more. Okay, so how much inventory have you entered onto your computer? If you are like me, the answer is, "Not much." The promise has not been fulfilled, until now.
Librarian Pro will organize items into smart collections, add them to the in-program Amazon.com shopping cart, mark them as lent out to friends, and even export your data to the web or to your iPod!
Librarian Pro will inventory almost anything that you collect, be it books, stamps, jewelry, baseball cards, a DVD collection, auto parts, or Cabbage Patch Dolls. It is difficult to sort through all of the items you collect to see which ones you have on file or to find where you last shelved a particular one. Librarian Pro is a complete personal inventory system. However, it excels at books.
You can enter an ISBN number from a book, and Librarian Pro will search for that book on Amazon.com. It can also search by author, artist, title, and keyword. If the book is known to Amazon.com, details about the book will automatically fill into the program, including product images. Additionally, it will retrieve up to five Amazon.com reviews. You can even add your own reviews.
Don't worry if a book is out of print as Amazon's database includes a lot of old books. I wrote a computer-genealogy book fourteen years ago which went out of print two years later. Amazon.com still has detailed information about that book, including reviews written by people who purchased it fourteen years ago.
I wouldn't expect Amazon.com to have information about a family history book that was published seventy-five or one hundred years ago, however. If you are entering information about a very old book, even a modern reprint of an old book, you probably will have to manually enter the relevant information.
Amazon.com's database also has information about CDs, DVDs, and numerous other products manufactured in the past ten to fifteen years.
Of course, entering data into any inventory program can be tedious. Librarian Pro has a better user interface than most of its competitors, but it really shines at one thing: use of a barcode reader.
Most paperback books printed today have a barcode on the back cover. Hardbound books typically have a barcode on the dust jacket. Magazines, CD cases, DVD cases, and many other modern products also have barcodes. You can purchase a barcode scanner directly from Koingo Software (the company that produces Librarian Pro software) or from many other places. Koingo Software sells both wired ($79.95) and wireless ($345) scanners that plug into a Windows or Macintosh USB port, no software drivers required. In fact, if you order a barcode reader at the same time you purchase the software, you can receive a significant discount.
Can you imagine using a barcode scanner on a computer that is connected to the Internet? Using Librarian Pro, you scan the barcode on the book's back cover, and Librarian Pro queries the Amazon.com database. if found, all the important information is automatically imported from Amazon.com and entered into the Librarian Pro database, including title, author's name, publisher, publication date, ISBN, and even user reviews. Almost no human intervention is required. I think even I could create an inventory with this product!
Databases created with Librarian Pro are fully compatible with each other, even between the Macintosh OS X and Windows versions. In fact, you can enter data in Windows and retrieve it on the Macintosh or vice-versa. Even better, one software license will grant activation for both copies of the application. Librarian Pro also supports importing data from other cataloging applications, such as Delicious Library and DVDpedia.
Other features include:
- Organize items into smart collections
- Create multiple databases for different locations
- Reload details for items from Amazon
- View a borrowed items list
- Filter out duplicate inventory items
- Shop on Amazon.com from within the program
- Compatible with Amazon Canada, USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and France
- Sleek Mac-like modern feel and controls
- View item details on the fly in the main window
- Display items in list or icon mode
- Import from Delicious Library
- Import from DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia, Gamepedia
- Import iTunes Albums
- Import Borrowers from Address Book (Mac OS X)
- Export to the web
- Export to your iPod
- Manage a list of borrower accounts
- Create records for software, music, movies, games, and books!
Librarian Pro is a commercial program that sells for $29.95 (U.S. funds). You can learn more or order it or download a free 15-day trial version of the program at http://www.koingosw.com/products/librarianpro.php.
While at that site, you might want to look at some of Koingo Software's other products. The company produces a lot of Macintosh software, and some of the programs also have Windows versions. The company offers a bundle price of all of the products they sell for $79.95 U.S. If you can use some of the other programs, that could be a real bargain.
