After attending a seminar on digital archives at Columbia University, I learned about personal library cataloging software. How many years have I worked in libraries, and yet, had never cataloged my own library? Granted, I did have a box of index cards of citations from college, but that was many years ago, and who knows where that is now. Not me!

Delicious Library, a Mac-based program, looked like something that I would be very interested in using. But alas, I am a longtime Windows user, with no plans of converting any time soon. An internet search led me to MediaMan, which appears to provide the same functions. Records can be imported using barcodes, ISBNs, or can be created individually. Many field options – location, catalog number, author, genre, publication date, price, etc. Multiple collections can be created, so I will have separate ones for books, CDs, LPs, videos and DVDs, and sheet music. There also options for games and toys. Photographs can be imported for each item, and a virtual visual shelf can be created and shared.

In their words,

MediaMan is a general purpose collection organizer. It helps you quickly establish a digital database of your collection, and makes it easy to keep item tracked. It automatically retrieves item information from the web, and provides tags, folders, and editing capability so that you can further manipulate them and keep them organized. MediaMan can also associates files on your hard drive, plays music in background while organizing your collection, and creates beautiful exports or print-outs so that you can share with your friends.

This should be fun, although I can see that there are a number a books that were published before barcodes or ISBNs were invented. Let’s get organized!

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