This app helped me catalogue my home library — and stop buying books twice

This app helped me catalogue my home library — and end buying books twice

a stack of books with a phone and tablet leaning against it

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Accept 1 footstep into my house and you lot'll notice two things immediately: one of my cats, who loves meeting new people, and hundreds of books. Being a book nerd — and being married to a librarian on superlative of that — means I've collected and then many books over the course of my life. Worst part? I've moved them all more times than I want to admit.

When you have a lot of any kind of medium, or particular in full general, you need a way to keep rail of it all. For my video games, I take the excellent GOG Galaxy 2.0 software that pulls in my PC games from all storefronts and my PS4. It just lacks support for my Nintendo Switch games, merely those are so few anyway. (I've even started taking an inventory of my pantry, simply I'll share that story another time.)

Another problem with having then many books is that y'all forget what you have. When you have equally many undocumented books as my wife and I did, you're bound to purchase 1 twice (or thrice) eventually. And that has happened more than once in my household.

I started getting tired of this and so I sought a solution. Y'all can use Goodreads for this by creating a new shelf for all of the books you owned. That's a nifty selection, but something most the Amazon-endemic Goodreads rubs me the wrong way. I use information technology for my TBR (to be read) listing and checking community reviews for a particular book, just that's it.

libib library screenshot — My chief library in Libib (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

I found Libib, a library inventory management system that has a personal home edition (that's free up to 5,000 items!). While I would have preferred a gratuitous-and-open-source, self-hosted culling, I liked the features that Libib offered. Plus, at that place are mobile apps with barcode scanners for y'all to check if yous own a volume or not (and to add to your library). That scanner has been invaluable for the many trips my married woman and I make to Barnes & Noble and used bookstores in the DC metro and Northern Virginia areas.

Yous create a free account with Libib, then y'all start making your libraries. I take two libraries: one for our books and some other for my manga and comic books. Yous can easily search, tag, and manage your library from the desktop web UI or from the mobile apps — fair warning, the iOS version is leagues improve than the Android ane. Y'all tin even become Goodreads-like functionality by creating Read and Want to Read categories.

libib mobile app ui on an iphone 13 pro max — (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Sometimes, Libib has trouble finding books and their metadata based on the barcode solitary. You can search by ISBN which works almost every time, or yous can add together books on your own by manually inputting the information. Later, you can download book covers from the internet and add them to the database if blank covers prove bothersome (I'k correct there with you lot).

My married woman and I finally managed to complete our library inventory, all while purging a ton of books in the procedure. It took quite a while, but it was a fun project. Now, when we find a volume out in the wild that intrigues us, we can hands check to see if we already take it. And Libib'south clean interface on desktop and mobile makes perusing your dwelling house library super easy. It definitely helps with the rediscovery of those things y'all'd forgotten about.

I highly recommend this software to any of yous book lovers out at that place. You can create up to 100 libraries in the free tier, and y'all tin even document your movies, video games, and music. five,000 private items is a large cap, more than than enough for most people. You tin can make your libraries public, then people can follow you. At that place'due south fifty-fifty a community attribute to Libib like to Goodreads, and so you can run into what your friends accept read or purchased. That'southward non really something I care about, simply it's there if you desire it.

Libib is an first-class tool for organization and information technology has helped my family immensely. If yous take a book ownership problem — if you can call information technology that — and so y'all may only want to attempt out Libib for yourself.

Jordan is the Phones Editor for Tom's Guide, roofing all things phone-related. He's written about phones for over five years and plans to continue for a long while to come up. He loves nothing more than than relaxing in his home with a volume, game, or his latest personal writing project. Hashemite kingdom of jordan likes finding new things to dive into, from books and games to new mechanical keyboard switches and fun keycap sets. Jordan tends to lurk on social media, but yous tin best achieve him on Twitter.