Software review: Delicious Library

[estirise]

I bought "Delicious Library" as part of the MacHeist software bundle (which has generated a bit of controversy which I won't go into here). It's a Mac OS X-based media cataloguing system where you can scan a barcode with your webcam (well, your iSight, anyway), input it, search by author, or manually enter details.

Since I got this as part of a bundle, I decided to check it out. Previously, I'd been using a bit of open-source freeware called "Books". Personally, I think it's a bit better, but nobody can deny that "Delicious Library" is prettier.

To test the program's finding and indexing capabilities, I grabbed a bunch of random books off my shelves. I have a lot of 10-20 year old books and media-tie ins of various sorts. Since "Delicious Library" uses Amazon exclusively, I decided to see how good its scanning was.

First of all, the scanning feature. While it's very nice that it can scan barcodes, I can type them in faster than it takes for me to get the book to the point where the software can read the barcode. It's a very nice gimmick, and it does scan, I just don't do well with it. Fortunately, you can search by title, author, type in the barcode, or enter things manually.

I scanned about two dozen books, give or take a few. I got 13 to scan or be found. The mainstream, non-tie-in books fared the best. The media tie-ins didn't do so well. I could get about half the Star Treks I scanned to come up. For Doctor Who novels, the novelizations didn't come up at all, but the New Adventures did. In fact, I got my 15 year old "Timewyrm: Genesys" to come up whereas an 8 year old Star Trek novel didn't come up at all (actually, it did, but as a Spanish-language videotape). Neither an Angel novelization nor a Forever Knight novelization did, either, but weirdly enough, one of my Tomorrow People novels did. Weird. Roswell fared well as well.

Eventually, I'll type my other novels in, finish scanning my library, and then scan my DVDs and videotapes. That'll be interesting. But in the meantime, I'm glad I didn't buy "Delicious Library" full price. If the next version expands the sources (though it will find it hard to keep up with the open-source "Books"), then it might be more useful. At least it's pretty....