Favorite Mac Apps: Delicious Library

Delicious Library

A few years ago, I stumbled onto a cataloging application called Delicious Library. I’ve heard of other apps that have a similar function, but I’ve always loved the metaphor of a library for cataloging. The app, produced by Delicious Company, allows you to enter books, CDs, DVDs, video games and basically anything else you might ever loan out to others (including tools and clothes). It organizes all of your items by category and gives you the option of creating sub-sets of your stuff and giving each sub-set its own shelf.

Shelves can be really helpful when you don’t want to see your entire library at once. You can create shelves that contain all of the books for a certain class you are taking; separate video games by console, books by author, etc. A friend of mine who is in the process of moving created a shelf for each box of books he packed so that when he moves he can find what he needs quickly even if he doesn’t get unpacked for a while.

Loaning items out is as simple as dragging an item to a friend’s name in your Address Book. Delicious Library then marks each checked out item with a red ribbon and dims its icon on your shelf. It also creates a new shelf just for that borrower which is nice, especially if they borrowed more than one item, because you can quickly see who has what. This alone was worth the program’s $40 price tag for me. For years I, like many others, put my name in the front of books I loaned out so they would know whose book they had. The problem was, I didn’t always remember who had my book. With DL, I always know who has what even if it is months later.

As great as the organizing features are, entering items into the library is half of the fun. There are multiple ways you can enter information for an item. You can type it manually, have it look up the info on Amazon via ISBN or UPS code or, and this is the fun way, use a web camera like Apple’s built-in iSight to scan the item. That’s right, just activate the bar code scanner feature and hold the bar code on an item up to your web cam. You will hear a beep when it recognizes the code (just like at the grocery store) and then the program will look it up on Amazon and add it to your shelf. Viola! I was able to enter over 300 books in just over an hour. If you have a large amount of items, you can purchase a dedicate bluetooth barcode scanner and scan even more quickly.

Delicious Library also lets you export your library to a pdf file or publish it to the web for viewing when away from home. It even provides an iPhone/iPod touch friendly web version. This feature makes DL a great home inventory program. If you ever lose some of your possessions to a fire or break-in you can provide a complete, detailed list to the insurance company when you file your claim. This assumes, of course, that you have either published your library to the web, printed out the pdf or backed up your library file with a service like DropBox.

Delicious Library is only available for the Apple Macintosh and requires OSX 10.5 or later. You can download a demo version from their web site that allows you to create a library of up to 25 items so you can try it out. I’ve been using version 1 for years. Version 2 has been out since late 2008 and I’m considering upgrading for the web publishing features. I’m hoping they will update it again soon since I would like to see a version optimized for OSX Snow Leopard.

Advertisement