Barcode reader

[ffutures]

Re my post yesterday concerning LibraryThing and DVDs; I forgot to say that I got one of these barcode readers for cataloguing my books (or at least the ones with bar codes on the covers), it works well and almost instantly, and seems to be very robust, especially considering the price:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/360721492990

So far it has gone to the right book about 90% of the time - the other 10% isn't a problem with the scan, it invariably turns out that the publisher has used a generic bar code that covers lots of books, rather than the ISBN of the specific book. A lot of the Buffy tie-in novels have this problem for some reason. Anyway, if you're going to be scanning a LOT of bar codes it's a lot more convenient than the iPad programs I've tried, and about ten or fifteen times faster. Highly recommended.

Comments

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

That's a nice piece of kit. Much nicer than the CueCat we bought off LibraryThing's affiliate when we joined up a few years back, but as they both do the same job...

We found exactly the same problem with the barcodes on tie-in books, but our main problem is trying to find the correct entry on LT to use. So many readers put so much superfluous and/or wrong information into the fields.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Can't argue with that. One book I tried had eight different entries, not sure it had that many editions!