Anthony Burgess was right about this, as about so many other things: "The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it." The corollary is that if you intend seriously to read a book, borrow it from a library or from a friend who will nag you about its return. Alas, I am embarrassed to report, my bookshelves creak under the weight of precisely 1,347 volumes -- and this after I have sold and given away as many as I have been able to over the past several years. Only recently, prompted by the threats, ingenious in their cruelty, from my life's partner, have I stopped buying books. Which leaves me at about the same place I was at when I started disposing of the books two years ago?
Of course, I did not descend into book junkiedom all by myself. There were plenty of enablers and other co-dependents all too willing to hustle me along. The chief among these were not, as you might expect, Amazon, although it had, as we shall see, a lot to do with it, but the people who created a software application, Book Collector. (Full disclosure: I have no ties, financial or otherwise with these people. Hell, I don't even know where they live.) I have tried more than my share of applications designed to help one keep track of one's books -- including a piece of software I bought several years ago that bore the imprimatur of the New York Public Library -- but none as seductive and so reasonably priced as this product of some outfit that calls itself Collectorz.com.
Book Collector wants to persuade one that it gives one full control over one's entire collection; and so it does, but at a cost. Suppose that you were just starting to assemble a library. You buy, let's say, a dozen books or so. You want to start a catalogue just to keep track of things. With a bar code scanner -- available, unsurprisingly, from Book Collector, also at a modest price -- you need only swipe the bar code that appears on the jacket of every book nowadays and Book Collector will check, online, the book's ISBN number with whatever database, or bases, you designate -- Amazon, Library of Congress, Powell's, you name it -- and, in an instant, return more information about the book -- unless one is a book dealer -- than one likely will need.
The data that shows up on your screen includes an image of the book's jacket -- when available -- together with the publisher's notes about the book, plus product details such as the date of publication, number of pages, the format, Dewey Decimal number, LOC classification, height and width; whatever. One can add notes and "Personal Details" such as tags -- categories, some provided, some the user designates -- and other details of one's choosing, such as where to find the book in one's library. One can print the details of a single book, selected books, or a catalogue of the entire collection, arrayed by title, author, or whatever. The catalog converts easily to a form that is suitable for shooting into cyberspace, where, as if it is in a virtual book bin, anyone may pick through your collection.
What can be wrong with all of that? Just this: imagine that, emboldened by the ease of adding to your collection, you expand it to say six dozen books. Ordinarily, you would now feel constrained by the cost of shelving, the need to organize your books in some fashion, and the blank spaces on the shelves you would have to leave open in order to keep moving books to make room for new books in their place. Book Collector can't do anything about the cost of shelving. It does, however, let you shelve your books completely at random, so that as one shelf fills up, you move down to the next, without gaps. All of the sorting and organizing is done within Book Collector.
Let's say you wish to catalogue a biography of, say, Alexander Hamilton. With BC you can cross-tag the book under several headings -- economics, public policy, colonial history, as well as biography -- gather the title in a folder, and take down the ones you need for whatever strikes your interest at the moment . As part of my catalog I tell book collector where to find a book by telling it the number of the bookcase in which I have shelved the book, together with the number of the shelf within that bookcase. (The bookcases needn't be side to side, obviously, nor even in the same room, so long as that each bookcase has been assigned a number.) And finally, BC makes it a cinch to track books you are foolish enough to lend to people. You just enter the date, the name of the borrower, and, at your discretion, when you'd like to have it back.
