Your Mac Is Not Only A Digital Hub, It’s A Library.

My Mac is becoming the digital garage of our family. Everything gets stored there. Almost everything. No pets yet.

Jack and I are scanning important family documents to the Mac. What’s next? Books? DVDs? CDs? Yes, yes, uh huh.

What’s making all of this possible are hard drives that are larger than ever and cheaper than ever. All our CDs are stored on the Mac now. All our photos, too.

How long will it be before we store all our movies and books on the Mac? It could happen. While we’re waiting for that much storage, there’s Delicious Library.

Finally, there’s a way to catalog, browse, even share your books, movies, music, and video games by using the Library in your Mac. Delicious Library is the librarian for all the above.

It’ll be a few years before we can store the physical books and movies, but for now Delicious Library stores all the information about each, just as if they’re in a library.

All you need is a Firewire video camera to act as a scanner, point it at the barcode on the back of any book, music CD, movie DVD, or video game. Delicious Library grabs the bar code information, does an internet search, and enters all the information in, well, inside the Library.

Literally, you catalog your library of books, CDs, DVDs, and games, all without that pesky Dewey Decimal system that infuriates everyone except Dewey’s heirs (I heard they’re getting a royalty on each book).

The list of features in Delicious Library is stunning, considering it’s a digital library, and not Miss Hastings from the neighborhood public library. Search? Spotlight digs up anything and everything quickly.

Dashboard widget for quick library browsing? Of course. iPod synchronization of your library data? Naturally.

Browse by cover just as if you were in a library or movie store? Duh. It’s that easy.

Delicious Library will make recommendations based on what you like. There’s quick links to similar products and more detail on Amazon. With OS X’s speach recognition, the Library will highlight what you want with a voice command.

You can set up personal ratings for everything in your library, and print out a list of everything, too.

This is a library, right? What do you do with items from a library? You check them out. No, not in the way women check out Brad Pitt, but as in check out a book or movie or CD. 

That way you can keep track of who’s borrowed what from your library. Slick, huh? But what of the future? What’s coming? Can you say Mac OS X Leopard? AppleTV? Front Row?

How long before the TV screen becomes the kiosk entry to your digital library? I’m waiting for that. For now, we’re stuck with a Delicious Library to store everything except birth certificates.

How does your Mac stack up as a library? Have your begun storing important documents either online or on your Mac? Can you envision a tie in from AppleTV to an interface in Delicious Library so you can view library contents from your TV in the living room?

Share your dreams, fantasies, and library realities in the Comments section below.

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