Confessions of a Book-A-Holic

Hello, my name is Lisa and I love books. I'm addicted to them really. Do I want to change that? Well, actually no, no, I don't. But there are definitely some drawbacks to this condition that I would like to manage better. Namely...

• finding the books I already own
• knowing what books I already own
• not buying books I already own (which really has happened more than once)
• utilizing our extensive book collection more effectively

I'm sure you are thinking. Come on! How bad could it really be? Well, in full disclosure here are the photos of my living room. I call our decor here "book shelf." I'm sure it will catch on soon....

This tall shelf - these are all of mine....

This tall shelf...all of hubby's....

There are more books scattered about the trailer - tucked in to every little spare nook and cranny I can find. So why on earth and I telling the world about all this? 

I think I find a product that will be a huge help with all my above issues.

I was recently given the opportunity to try out the Book Collector program from Collectorz.com as part of the TOS Homeschool Crew.  In fact, I jumped at the opportunity! 

I have a database in my computer of my own making, but I find it cumbersome to maintain and it was horrific to create. I can't begin to tell you how many hours it took to type it all in. 

I have been so happy with the Book Collector program. It is super simple. 

A screen shot of what the program would look like with books entered (taken from their website).

When I first started with it, I simply entered the ISBN numbers for the books by hand. I'm pretty fast on a keyboard (with letters and numbers) and I wasn't sure I wanted to buy a bar code scanner. However, after a couple weeks I broke down and purchased the bar code scanner. I admit freely I just wanted the scanner. Adding books to the program is easy with or without the scanner but the scanner makes it oh, so much more fun!

Back to simple....I grabbed a stack of books, scanned each of the bar codes, clicked on "search" and walked away. When I came back the program had found all the information - including photo covers.

Not only will Book Collector catalog print books - it will also catalog eBooks and Audio files. Since more and more books can be purchased in a digital format, this is an amazing feature!

Book Collector has an extensive user manual right on-line that shows how it works and then some.

Still aren't sure if this is the right program for you? You can try it for free! This will allow you to input 100 books to be sure you like it or not. If you think you want to buy it right now, there are two different versions available - Standard ($29.95) and Pro ($49.95).

Collectorz.com also offers cataloging programs for (prices are the same as listed above for each collector program):

• Music (CD's and digital files)
• DVDs and Blu-Ray 
• Comic books
• Video Games
• MP3 files
• Photos (this one is oh...so....tempting!)

I really love this program and I am having a lot of fun with my new toy scanner. If you'd like to see what other Crew members had to say about the program, be sure to head over to the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog.



Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review. All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.