Let me preface this by saying that I have a literal physical library in the second bedroom I use as a study, and I frequently borrow physical books from friends in addition to buying them myself.

After buying what I thought was a great deal at a B&N sale, only to come home and realize that I already had a copy of that particular Get Fuzzy treasury, I've resolved to somehow load a full copy of my library onto my iphone so I can stop making that mistake. Yeah, it was only ten bucks, but this is far from the first time I've done this with various series, especially when I make trips to Half Price Books, when I forget that yes, I really did buy that particular novel back in college instead of borrowing it from a friend like I thought I did. Those 5-$10 mistakes add up quickly, and I'd prefer to stop having to make return trips due to stupidity and faulty memory on my end.

Does anyone have a good Apple app for tracking the entire contents of one's library? I don't care if it costs money, as if it prevents me from burning money on fuel returning books or just eating the costs and keeping two copies of that particular novel, it'd be worth it. I would love something where I could just scan in the ISBN on the back, or even better something that would pop up some sort of alert when a new novel by a particular author is released. Allowing tracking by series to determine which ones I'm missing and need to keep an eye out for would be even better.

Any suggestions?

 

Both Goodreads (Android/IPhone) as well as Librarything (Android/IPhone) have mobile apps. It would depend on how big your collection is how much time you'd need to check if you have a particular book already, but that should at least suffice until you or someone else comes up with a better solution.

 

GoodReads is awesome. Highly recommended.

 

I'd go with GR over LT. Didn't really like the feel of that one. :\

What would be better than either of those is the ability to barcode scan that shit and have it autoadded to your list of shit you have. Or even wishlist kind of thing if you're going through a store and dont ahve the cash at the time. D;