Free. Your Mac Keeps Track Of Your Books. Why?

Adrian Monk is probably a Mac user. No one that obsessive compulsive would survive trying to keep Windows running.

Would Monk use his Mac to catalog all of his books into a neatly organized digital library? How about if the catalog utility was free? Do we really need to catalog our book collection?

Computers are good at remembering things. Since, arguably, the Mac is easier to use than a Windows PC, more reliable, more dependable, then it does a better job remembering. It would be nice to have fully digitized versions of all the books in the Kayhill Library, instead of just a list of books. It is not to be any time soon.

Assume for a moment that you have a library of books. They’re sitting on shelves here and there throughout your home. Wouldn’t it be nice to catalog your library? Or, is that just an exercise in free expression of anal retentive symptoms?

Adrian Monk would like the latest version of Books for his Mac. Did I mention that Books is free?

What do you get for free? A free book cataloging tool for your personal book library. We catalog and capture our music into the iTunes library, right. Photos go in the iPhoto library. Movies go in the iMovie library.

What about our books? Unfotunately, unless you have an extensive collection of audio books, books tend to stay in the library on our shelves, gathering dust.

Books, the cataloging utility for your Mac, stores, sorts, and searches your personal library of books. Add new books, edit information in older books, sort by title, author, or whatever. Sorting would seem to be a fun exercise for the obsessive compulsive Mac user.

If you have a very large book collection, you can use Books to search through your list, which is infinitely quicker than checking each book on your shelf, but infinitely more expensive (having to buy a Mac is an infinite expense-- we Mac users continually pay and pay and pay...).

Other utilities offer similar functions. Library Books tracks your borrowed library books, which is handy if you don’t have many books in your own library, and tend to use the public library often. Otherwise, Books would be a better solution if you take home books from the public library and never return them.

I figure Monk would go with Delicious Library, which is a perfect gift for the Mac user with everything, including obsessive compulsive disorder.

What about you? Do you have an overpowering need to use your Mac to catalog and organize everything in your life? Is your music in iTunes? Photos in iPhoto? Are you ready to catalog your books to your Mac? Share your pain, experience, and hope for a better tomorrow in the Comments section below.

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