I need a computer program-or jeff needs some guidance

[onions!]

First let me confess that my computer skills end somewhere between the power button & opening my e-mail.I may already have what I need but don't even know it.

O.K.,that said what I'm after seems fairly simple.

I have about three thousand books,seven hundred cd's,& about three hundered movies in my collection.I've tried keeping track of this stuff mentally & by written account.My memory fails occasionally & I don't carry the list to the bookstore.My final straw occured last week when I discovered that I'd just purchased my THIRD copy of a particularly good book.

What I'd like is a program wherefore I can organize my books by author,series(if applicable),title keyword,publisher,& possibly type(Rome/space opera/classic).The same goes for the music & movies.I usually shop for just a few authors or books by a particular publisher & if I could print out a list by author(s) I might save myself some aggravation.

When I asked the IT guy @ work I recv'd a puzzled look that turned thoughful before he walked away.IOWs,I'm not sure what's happening there.

After a Google of "library software" I realized that I'm just probably not looking in the right place & am likely to make this harder than it needs to be.

Any direction?Thoughts?

[Standing Wolf]

You have a data base problem. If you have a data base program, or even a worthy spread sheet program, you have your answer. Keying in all the data may take awhile.

[Guest]

If you are using Windows, you can use  Access to do this.
 

Go to Access in your suite. If not on machine, insert your disk, load it, then in respective HELP at the  top , and should be a Northwind sample database to see how things are done in Access.

Not on Win, or don't have MS office...save your money - and go here:

www.openoffice.org  [OpenOffice] also has a database.  I forget what it is called. I have not used it much , has been awhile. I have recommended it and folks have used it to catalog CDs, and DVDs.

HTH

Steve

[mtnbkr]

Poke around in the DVD and Home Theatre forums and you'll find software dedicated to your movie problem.  I've seen on package in action and it is pretty slick, even downloading movie info and cover pics from the Internet.  I'm sure similar packages exist for CDs and books.

Or, you can go the more manual route and use Access and other similar programs like SW and SM suggested.

Chris

[Ben]

Openoffice's database prg is called Base. If what you wrote is all you want to do, you can easily do that in a spreadsheet. Excel and others let you sort your data most any old way.

The cleaner way is a database prg, but you have a longer learning curve to learn all the complex functionality.

Oh yeah, what Mtnbkr said will probably be your easiest route. There are tons of people out there that want to show off their software skills via freeware.

[cfabe]

Like mtnbkr said, this seems like it'd be a common enough problem that someone will have written some sort of software for it already. If you get yourself a barcode reader pen or gun, the software may be able to enter all the information about the item via an internet lookup just by swiping the barcode. I don't have any leads on this software, but with your skills I certianly wouldn't think that trying to set up an access database and manually enter all the data will be efficient use of your time.

[Felonious Monk/Fignozzle]

I've picked up a proggie or two from download.com that did pretty well.
Go there, and do a search for "home inventory" and pick something either highly rated or with lots of downloads.
That should get you something that someone's created from Access, Excel, etc. so you don't have to re-invent the wheel.

HTH
Fig

[onions!]

Many options!It looks like I have some research to do.

Thank you for the leads,jeffw

[Brad Johnson]

An Excel spreadsheet, properly thought out and set up, will do just what you want. The problem is that you need to be relatively Excel proficient to get it started. Microsoft Excel is a default program in most manufacturer's computer's productivity software suites. Think 'Microsoft Works' or 'Home Office'.

Brad

[roo_ster]

You need tellico.  

It is a purpose built program designed to organize books, CDs, DVDs, whatever.  Input the ISBN of the book, & it searches the amazon.com database and downloads all the available information, including an image of the book cover.

It is slick.  It is sweet.  I like it alot.

It can be found here:
http://www.periapsis.org/tellico/

BTW, MS Access is of the Devil.  OK, maybe that is a bit strong, but you get the point.

Some capabilities:
    *  Supports default collections of books, bibliographic entries, videos, music, video games, comic books, coins, stamps, trading cards, and wines.
    * Supports user-defined custom collections, as well.
    * Supports any number of user-defined fields, of several different types: text, paragraph, list, checkbox, number, URL, date, , images, and combinations.
    * Handles entries with multiple authors, genres, keywords, etc.
    * Automatically formats titles and names
    * Supports collection searching and view filtering
    * Sorts and groups collection by various properties
    * Automatically validates ISBN
    * Allows customizable entry templates through XSLT
    * Imports Bibtex, Bibtexml, RIS, CSV, and XSLT-filtered data
    * Exports to Bibtex, Bibtexml, ONIX, CSV, HTML, PilotDB, and XSLT-filtered data
    * Includes translations for more than nine languages, other than English
    * Imports information directly from Amazon.com (US, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Canada), IMDb, z39.50 servers, PubMed, and from external scripts.
    * Imports CDDB data
    * Scans and imports audio file collections, such as mp3 or ogg
    * Imports and exports to Alexandria libraries

[onions!]

jfruser?That looks fantastic!Perfect even!Unfortunately it was also instant deja vu.As soon as I started trying to read the who,what,& wherefore on that site I had the same deer-in-the-headlights feeling that I had on my first day of French class in the 7th grade!:)

IOWs,not only could I not tell if that program would run w/my Windows system,I was unable to even find where the program could be accessed.

I tried to learn Gaelic once too.Not good.

Thanks though.

[garrettwc]

41mag tellico is written for KDE. The Linux GUI environment. It will not run on Windows that I know of.

Here's something more Windoze based.
http://www.collectorz.com

They even have a free try before you buy download.

[onions!]

garretwc,thank you!I tried the freebie on that site & it seems to do what I'm after.

[garrettwc]

You're welcome. Glad I could help.