Media Inventory Software
by Ronda Yoder
The Delicious Library (http://www.delicious-monster.com/) $40 was developed by Delicious Monster to provide an easy means of recording the items in your home library, workshop, and essentially your life. If you have the ability right now to look at all your shelves and storage areas at home, you may not think you need this software, but if you were to lose everything in a hurricane, having this record would be very handy. A feature of the program is that it gives the current replacement costs of the items, drawn from the Amazon database on the Internet. The software allows you to scan or hand enter books, CDs, DVDs, video games, board games, tools, and appliances. You can organize items by shelf, and you can even note when someone borrows something, who has it, when they borrowed it and when it is due back. You can put things up for sale on Amazon with just a few clicks. You can upload your library to the Internet, if you want to share your resources with your friends.
The iSight camera built-in to many Macs will work for the scanner, as well as a variety of video & web cameras. The company will also sell a Bluetooth Scanner that can be carried around the house to do the scanning (storing the information in the scanner until you return to the Bluetooth range). Cost of this scanner is $215, but purchase must be accompanied by a software purchase. Because the software is still fairly new, there are still bugs being worked out, but the company seems to be working on it. The help guide for the software is not currently available. That is a big issue at this point. They need to get the problems solved that are preventing the help file from being written. Overall, this software is a great idea, well executed, and reasonably priced.
There is another software that is similar, Librarian Pro, by Koingo software (http://www.koingo.com/) $29.95, but I have not evaluated how the two programs really compare.