Cuecat makes entering books easier

LibraryThing is now selling CueCats. A CueCat is an inexpensive barcode reader. LibraryThing can read the info that CueCat outputs, so you can just scan the ISBN off the back of the book and it will be entered into LibraryThing for you. See the LibraryThing blog for more info.

Ha, now you tell me. I entered all mine by hand... but it didn't really take that long...

I only found out about it yesterday myself . . . and I entered over a hundred by hand myself. Even so, just entering the ISBN and letting LT do the rest helped a lot.

I entered almost 4000 items by hand - and for about 20% there was no library I could copy from so I did complete manual entry. It's not that bad if you're a decent typist LOL. I did a bit every day - took me a month and a half to do the bulk of it. Mind you, I'm a professional cataloguer and compared to full MARC coding and assigning subject headings and LC call numbers, cataloguing on LT is a doddle.

Jane

I am not a decent typist, though I am a better typist now than when I was in high school, thanks to word processors and blogging. On the other hand, my handwriting has declined in both quality and speed. I wonder how many books our family has in total? I am only cataloguing my gardening books, and I know my husband would never want his made public anyway, but I wonder if we could top you . . .

I wouldn't be at all surprised if you could top me :) Until I found LT I thought I had a large library - now I know I'm just a piker.

I joined LT in October 2005 and in December I had the 10th largest library... Now I'm #72 and dropping further every day. I entered absolutely everything - books for the whole family, plus cds and videos. I wanted a complete list for lots of reasons - insurance, to control duplicate purchasing (now there's a PalmThing I have the whole works on my palm pilot so it's always with me :) ) and the social side has been fascinating - seeing who else has the same books I do and all.

I've been debating getting a cuecat. it certainly would be easier than entering all my books by hand, even if I don't have to put them in fully manually. but the only thing is... what else can you use it for? if its only for library thing, I'm not sure I want to invest in one, you know?

Magelet33: I love my cuecat. I have not found other uses for it - LT is enough. I am not a cataloger and would probably not spend the time entering all the data. But I do research and rely on all of the info. so I appreciate the data. Cuecat works for me.

Great here also, cuecat has saved a lot of time though frustrating when book not found on a list and still have to do a manual entry.