Hi Frank,
No, ^^^^^ trust me, he's not fat! :>
My older brother Carlton has several thousand paperbacks (plus a
number of hardbacks) in his... er, "collection", and I've suggested
several times that he could use some sort of automated system to track
them. However, as I'm sure you've noticed, it's easier to suggest
something than to get it implemented (the barcode scanner I gave him
one year sits unused<sigh!>).
I'm aware of several book-tracking apps, including several (many?)
which take the ISBN and save your typing fingers by looking it up on
Amazon.com. Some software to look at:
The problem with automated approaches is that books (and other
publications) aren't uniform in their support for ISBN/ISSN's, etc.
If your brother is like me, his paperback collection probably
has lots of titles where the only "identifier" (besides the
actual title/author) predates ISBN -- things like "A5523"
or "51-126".
Other titles may have ISBN's -- but not a barcode. So, you resort
to typing things in by hand (trust me, this quickly leads to
"I think I'll do something else for a while" after which, you
never quite seem to make the time to *finish* the task!)
Still other titles might not be trackable in any sort of
"public" scheme. E.g., the first two titles off my
"regulatory" shelf:
_Configuration Management Handbook of Standards_
_Compliance & Validation_
Or, more "mainstream":
_Abacus Arithmetic_
_Versalog Slide Rule Instructions_
(of course, I use the term "mainstream" tongue-in-cheek! :> )
This is often the case for equipment and software "manuals".
And, "technical papers" leave you with nothing other than
title and name of author(s).
I designed a barcode based system for a non-profit some years
ago who's mission was to recycle textbooks (etc) to needy schools
"for the cost of postage". The goal was to be able to keep
better track of "inventory" -- so someone didn't have to
physically walk through the stacks searching for a particular
title to even *see* if a copy -- or multiple copies -- was
available. Ideally, this could all be published on an
interactive web site where "customers" could peruse the
collection and submit formal requests based on their findings
(freeing up volunteers who would otherwise have to "run their
queries ON FOOT").
I quickly found that not all had a "universal" identifier. Nor a
machine-readable barcode. (and there was something funny about
"school books" -- but I can't recall)
I augmented the design to include provisions to print, on demand,
"custom" barcodes (not ISBNs) that could be used to label
"identical titles". No ISBN? Fine, *create* a unique identifier
and paste N labels on those N copies. The system doesn't care
if the identifier is an ISBN or the UPC off a can of *soup*!
But, the actual title had to be manually entered, for these.
Those titles weren't possible for (remote) customers to browse
unless they happened to know what they were looking for. So,
I added the ability to capture an image of the book cover
(using a flatbed scanner on which you could simply lay the
book -- no need to "hold it open" to a particular page so
this was an easy task!). This would let customers browse
books by title and *cover* -- "Oh, yes! That's the 'Smith'
book. I used that in my last school district!"
All that design effort (predicated on "free/volunteer labor")
and the system was soon abandoned. If your collection is
*static* or VERY SLOWLY GROWING, its easy to keep up (even if
you get behind for several months). But, with the turnover
that they encountered, this got to be an ongoing "chore"
(deliberate choice of words). Eventually, they simply stopped
offering the service and would recycle the books "as paper
products" :<
Point being, make sure the scheme you come up with will
address your needs in a way that you will be willing to
maintain. Otherwise, it turns out to be little more than
a "curiosity".
(In my case, I learned a lot about organizing and *identifying*
data -- which I've carried forward into other *commercial*
designs, since then)