Looking for an app to manage books

beveragelady

Hope this is the right place for this. I'm trying to reach bookish people rather than techy people!
I've tried a few apps but nothing seems to do the job. I'd love an android app that will catalogue my books into some sort of order, ideally the Dewey decimal system because that's the one I already know.
Libib has a scan function that works very well, but it just creates a list that is alphabetical by title, not by author or subject. A few other apps do something similar. Is there anything that will scan barcodes and tell me where a book belongs in the Dewey system? I'm moving house and I'm hoping to take advantage of the move to get my books organised.

Travel is good

The Library Thing https://www.librarything.com/
I believe you can scan in your books using a bar scanner. I haven't used it myself, but the idea of using a scanner sounds handy.
I myself use Book Crossing www.bookcrossing.com but there is no Dewey system on that, and sometimes I find it difficult to track down a booik if I don't have the Book Crossing ID number.

I've used Shelfari in the past http://www.shelfari.com/ but haven't used it in quite a while. Again, it has no Dewey system.

Good luck!

oEmmao

im totally addicted to the GOODREADS app as it sorts my books into how many ive read each year, gives recommendations and has book groups etc

beveragelady

OP back again.
Really what I'm looking for is an app that will help me organise my actual real-world bookshelves, rather than just create a digital list of books. I'd like to be able to use the app to find out where a particular book is when I go looking for it, so it makes sense to me to organise them by first by category then alphabetically by author, similar to what happens in a library. I've been using an app called Book Catalogue with some success. The scan feature works well but the sorting is a bit unreliable. For example, one novel by an author might be catagorised under Fiction/historical/military while another by the same author from the same series might be catagorised as fiction/general. There is no quick way to change the catagories in the app, so the addition of a book often requires a bit of checking and inputting. I have a huge number of older books, pre-barcode, so there is a lot of manual entry required there too but I don't see how there could be a quick way around that problem.
The app can sync with goodreads, which is useless to me, but I'm sure would be helpful to some people.
I'd consider getting a barcode reader if there was a programme for my laptop that would do the job properly. This, for example: http://www.collectorz.com/book/ seems to use the LoC system, which might be ok.

scream

oEmmao wrote: »

im totally addicted to the GOODREADS app as it sorts my books into how many ive read each year, gives recommendations and has book groups etc

I agree, I use it all the time myself but I'm disappointed they don't allow short stories to be listed(other than those published as a stand alone book) and will actively delete entries that are pointed out to them. I've searched high and low for a short story version of goodreads but to no avail. If I were the tech. type, I'd have a go at it myself.

Anyway, other than that goodreads is a great resource.

writerful

I'm not sure if the following recommendation is quite what you are looking but I use it regularly and find it an excellent app for ebooks particularly on Android devices such as an Amazon kindle or similar devices. It is not really a social app the way Goodreads is but is more suited to cataloguing books and reading PDF's which can be tagged and filed under subjects.

The app in question is Aldika and is free to download. They also have an extensive public domain section to download high quality books complete with beautiful covers.

Hope this helps..

writerful

The name of the app is Aldiko rather than Aldika.

beveragelady

writerful wrote: »

I'm not sure if the following recommendation is quite what you are looking but I use it regularly and find it an excellent app for ebooks particularly on Android devices such as an Amazon kindle or similar devices. It is not really a social app the way Goodreads is but is more suited to cataloguing books and reading PDF's which can be tagged and filed under subjects.

The app in question is Aldika and is free to download. They also have an extensive public domain section to download high quality books complete with beautiful covers.

Hope this helps..

I'm trying to organise actual physical books in such a way that I'll be able to find one on the shelf when I want it and I'll be able to keep track of books that have been borrowed. I don't have an e-reader of any sort, I just have an awful lot of books.

writerful

beveragelady wrote: »

I'm trying to organise actual physical books in such a way that I'll be able to find one on the shelf when I want it and I'll be able to keep track of books that have been borrowed. I don't have an e-reader of any sort, I just have an awful lot of books.

When I read app I immediately jumped straight into digital books given that I am a big fan of ebooks. One way to go would be to create your own system using available technology rather than trying to find an existing application that fully meets your needs.

Amazon have an app called Firefly which can read barcodes off books and then pulls the title up. You could create private lists within your Amazon account (if you have one) to file these scanned titles into a relevant list as a very basic workaround.

As an ex bookseller who worked in Hodges Figgis in Dublin and Hatchards in London I am definitely keen to see if there is such an application for book lovers to manage their extensive book collections.

HenryCrun

There is an Android app Codex (by Emilio Simoes) which probably fits your requirements. You could use the Category field for the classification scheme. Books can be added via ISBN search, import or manual input.

dobdob

I use an app I found in the Apple Store called Library I scanned the barcode of the books and it automatically retrieved book cover author etc. I can search then based on a number of criteria. It also handles my dvd and cd collection in the one place. Recommend it. It's a little tedious to scan everyitem but that's the upfront work once done it's great especially when in a book, music or DVDs shop I can check do I have the item already.