Like many people who have large libraries of books, videotapes, and music, I have trouble keeping track of everything, because it’s tedious and time-consuming to enter several hundred items into a spreadsheet. But now, thanks to Delicious Monster’s Delicious Library 1.0.6, I have an easy way to catalog all my books, music, movies, and video games.
Delicious Library uses a product’s UPC symbol (or bar code) to query Amazon.com’s database, and then it records the product information. Unlike boring spreadsheets, Delicious Library reproduces a product’s cover art to display details about your media in rows of virtual bookshelves. And its integration with Apple’s iCal and Address Book helps you keep track of what you have, to whom you’ve lent it, and when you expect it back.
Although Delicious Library is compatible with a standard bar-code scanner, its most ingenious feature is innovative real-time bar-code-recognition software that turns an ordinary iSight camera into a bar-code-devouring fiend. Once I got the hang of scanning—which took less than five minutes—I began scanning just about everything in my home that even vaguely resembled a UPC symbol (See screenshot).
I had no trouble scanning any of my DVDs or games, but I did have to enter several older books and hardback books with missing jackets by hand. Creating manual entries by entering title and author information is a snap, and Delicious Library was able to find all but my most esoteric titles in Amazon.com’s database. From my music collection, I successfully scanned in 267 CDs and had to manually enter the remaining 44—nearly all of which were released by independent labels.
My only complaints are Delicious Library’s lack of iTunes integration and its inability to query databases other than Amazon.com’s (so that it could recognize more unusual types of media, such as international books and albums). Delicious Monster says its next version will likely support the Internet Movie Database and the allmusic database.
Macworld’s Buying Advice
Delicious Library 1.0.6 is an excellent Mac application. In addition to being useful and easy to use, it’s just plain fun. I highly recommend it for anyone with a large media collection. If only it had iTunes integration and could query databases that recognized international imports, it would be perfect.