I see that Bookpedia works with iSight/Scanner. My question is, how does this work? Is it worth buying an iSight to enter books? We have hundreds of books and I thought this might make the process quicker. Is it quicker than entering the info manually? Is my assuption that entering the ISBN number would be all that's required? Is it possible to sync the info between two Macs?
Thanks!
Vanders
Bookpedia iSight/Scanner question
I wouldn't say quicker, but everything is relative. I am a fast typist and have no problems looking at ISBNs and typing them up for the search. (An ISBN is all that is required.) Also the advantages of using keywords comes in handy because I can read titles and authors from afar without having to take the book out of the bookshelf. (You can also do a bunch of books by one author by browsing the results for a particular author, and to limit the keyword to author only use "&Author=Agatha Christie" that way you won't get a book by Ian Rankin that mentions Agatha Christie in it's description.)
However, if your looking for an automated scanning solution let me recommend a cue cat. You will save a lot of money over and iSight and it's much faster as it's a laser scanner. You will find one online must likely at ebay for about 10-15 dollars.
To share a library you can use a shared location that both Macs have access to, here is a how to. But if you want to just move information from one Mac to another, you can copy the data folder from one Mac to the other Mac while the program is not running in the Mac your copying to. The data folder is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia. Some users even carry their data folder on their iPod.
However, if your looking for an automated scanning solution let me recommend a cue cat. You will save a lot of money over and iSight and it's much faster as it's a laser scanner. You will find one online must likely at ebay for about 10-15 dollars.
To share a library you can use a shared location that both Macs have access to, here is a how to. But if you want to just move information from one Mac to another, you can copy the data folder from one Mac to the other Mac while the program is not running in the Mac your copying to. The data folder is located in ~/Library/Application Support/Bookpedia. Some users even carry their data folder on their iPod.
Thanks for the info! I went ahead and purchased the program...money well spent. So far we have about 700 books in the database...10 key works very well. Thanks for letting me know that there was no need for iSight.
I've tried to do the aurthor=name search, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Am I doing something wrong? It would be very convienient to get all the titles from an aurthor when you have lots of their books, for example Stephen King or Dean Koontz.
When using a CueCat, do you have to do anything special? I found them on eBay, but the info said that the bar code isn't always the ISBN number?
Thanks again!
Vanders
I've tried to do the aurthor=name search, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Am I doing something wrong? It would be very convienient to get all the titles from an aurthor when you have lots of their books, for example Stephen King or Dean Koontz.
When using a CueCat, do you have to do anything special? I found them on eBay, but the info said that the bar code isn't always the ISBN number?
Thanks again!
Vanders
For the author search you need to add the ampersand at the beginning so the program knows to not read author as a keyword. So it would look like this "&Author=Stephen King" or "&Author=Koontz" without the quotes.
It's true that not all barcodes can turn into ISBNs. There are some mass market paperbacks that have 12 digit UPC numbers for reasons that regular store system could not handle the 13 digit EAN; however, look inside of front cover and there should be a 13 digit barcode EAN. The EAN that regularly start with 978 is automatically translated by Bookpedia into an ISBN for searching.
There are some unmodified version of the CueCat, these are not a problem for Bookpedia as it can decode the CueCat output and translate it into a number, I would recommend a modified version so that you may use it with other programs that might not handle the encoded input; when modified they send the numbers as if they had been inputted by the keyboard.
It's true that not all barcodes can turn into ISBNs. There are some mass market paperbacks that have 12 digit UPC numbers for reasons that regular store system could not handle the 13 digit EAN; however, look inside of front cover and there should be a 13 digit barcode EAN. The EAN that regularly start with 978 is automatically translated by Bookpedia into an ISBN for searching.
There are some unmodified version of the CueCat, these are not a problem for Bookpedia as it can decode the CueCat output and translate it into a number, I would recommend a modified version so that you may use it with other programs that might not handle the encoded input; when modified they send the numbers as if they had been inputted by the keyboard.