Year: 2005

Being a musician, one tends to gather a lot of “things”. CDs, books, magazine articles, posters, pictures, autographs, etc, etc, etc. How do you keep track of all them?

If you decided to “rip” all your CDs to a program like iTunes, then you have a nice, easy to use list of what you have. But what if you DO NOT or CAN NOT rip all your CDs. Like you don’t have the space, nor really want to have all your stuff on the computer? And what about books?

One answer on the Macintosh is Delicious Library. Using UPC codes found on most everything, it can easily catalog your “stuff”. However, there are some problems……

First, Delicious Library is not the only product out there that can look up and catalog items. Bookpedia, Media Collector, and probably a myriad of other programs on both the Mac and PC. Most all these use some sort of Database to look up the UPC or ISBN numbers off the book. Delicious Library uses Amazon.com to look them up. Some of the other programs can use other databases to look stuff up. Is it necessary? Perhaps…..

Delicious Library can use a bluetooth (ie: wireless) scanner to scan in UPC codes. This works GREAT. It’s very cool. And a HUGE time saver if you have a lot of “stuff” like I do. To scan 200 DVDs, it took about 15 minutes. To scan a couple hundred CDs (451), about 30 minutes. All wirelessly, all right to the computer. However….

Not everything has a UPC code. And not everything has a UPC code that can be found off Amazon.com. If you are part of BMG Jazz club you get CDs that don’t have a standard UPC code. It has some sort of BMG code on it. Resulting in a failed lookup on Amazon. But if it does have a UPC code, it works very very well. CDs I bought in the 90s work. Delicious Library finds it, adds the album art, and info to your collection. Easy.

Books are a mess. 9 times out of 10 the UPC code failed to find the book. However, ISBN numbers 9 times out of 10 WORKED. But you have to enter the ISBN number manually. That is a pain. But it works usually.

Hal Leonard sucks. Just 90% of the books I have from them, have their own custom UPC or they fail to be looked up properly. Shame on you Hal Leonard. If the book has an ISBN, it seems to work mostly. Oh…..and Warner Brothers. You guys are in the same boat. Get the UPCs happening.

Aebersold. Aebersold does not seem to have UPC codes at all. None of the books I own have a UPC. Books like “Around The Horn”, “The Augmented Jazz Scale”, etc have NOTHING. No ISBN, nada. I do think my latest purchase from Aebersold, Vol. 112 – Cole Porter has a UPC on it. It was not found on Amazon.

I’m not going to mention all the other pieces of Music I have that have nothing on it. All those classical Sonatas for Flute/Clarinet/Sax, etc. These are all manual entry things. Not fun.

For people with a lot of stuff that can be bar code read, programs like Delicious Library rock. However, if you have stuff that is NOT bar-coded nor have ISBN numbers, this program is pretty much useless for you. I think if this program could create a printable bar code and increment it, that would make the program 50 times more useable. Or even if it printed a UPC for items (like Books) where the UPC isn’t found. Then this program would be an elegant, functional organizer.