Pretty good so far - Chris Karr

(Disclaimer: I'm the developer of this app.)

Some comments on the point that you raise:

"It does have some omissions that seem strange to me, such as no standard fields for any sort of catalog number like Dewey or Library of Congress."

The Books userbase is spread around the world, so I declined to include standard fields for any of the local cataloging schemes. The Library of Congress quickfill plugin puts that information in the extended info. As a designer, if I put in one national cataloging field, I'd have to put them all in - and I'd quickly run out of space on the interface.

"It has also has no standard field for price, and the main reason I need a book catalog is for insurance purposes."

Check the copies pane. You can add a copy of a book you own and the specific price paid. This allows you to track, say, both hardcover and paperback versions of a novel and record the price for each without adding too many superfluous records.

"And, like many similar book catalog apps, it has a field for reviews, which seems odd to me for an app catalog books owned, but maybe that's not how a lot of folks use it?"

I don't use it that much, but some users record each time they read a book and what they thought of it each time.

"Books separates info about a book into several panes, which provides a less cluttered view but far less information. I can imagine that this would get to be a problem if you had to enter many books by hand, or if your need for a particular field doens't match the developer's understanding of the field's priority."

I'm working on a "batch add" for custom fields in an upcoming release. Hopefully this will ease the pain a bit.

Thanks for the kind words, constructive feedback, and the review!

-Chris

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Monday, September 24 2007 @ 06:33 AM PDT

Pretty good so far - KNAUF

I have never heard o..f or seen this little beauty before....and spent under a minute and already have found the price field....several acutally....so my friend...when the student is ready the field appears....its there....I have not really spent any time with this app yet...but the two minutes I have I have BEEN IMPRESSED>.....auto fill from Amazon is great and keywords etc...it is great for my purposes....creating a bibliography for research will be much easier....now the big question is there a menu item for 'create bibliography'?....I bet there is or will be.
Thanks for making life easier and CHEAPER too. Much appreciated.
Colin

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Saturday, March 29 2008 @ 06:35 AM PDT

Cataloguing and international use - cfrees

I haven't used the application yet, so this is not a review. But I wanted to comment on the developer's response to the comments about the lack of fields for entering Dewey/LoC entries. I don't know just how widely the Dewey system is used, but it is certainly not specific to the United States. U.K. libraries use it widely, for example. LoC may be more local, though. Even so, it might still be useful for international users in English-speaking countries (or who read in English) as books are often imported from the States if they are not available locally. Personally, I think an entry for Dewey would be useful, but I wouldn't probably use LoC data. Since I'm not a current user, though, take this for what it is worth!

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Sunday, April 06 2008 @ 04:02 PM PDT