For about a year now I've been trying to figure out where my copy of The War of Art went. I'm sure I lent it to someone but I can't remember who or when. I love books and I tend to value them tremendously. In fact, I was one of the few people in college who almost never sold books back. So you can imagine how much I'm bothered by this missing book. Unfortunately this isn't the only missing book in my personal library. At first I considered never lending a book to out again but quickly decided against that in favor of just keeping a spreadsheet listing any books I leant out.

Then I started thinking maybe I should list all my books but that was just too much work, or so I thought.

Booxster, a personal librarian program, is the most fun piece of practical software I've used in a long time. It's great not only because it creates an index of all your books but it has a great interface which makes it super easy to use, it,Aeos cheap as all heck ($15), and is jam-packed with all sorts of great features including a way to track checked-out books. Forget about weeks of data entry, one of the best features of Booxster is its bar code reading functionality. We hooked up our video camera to the MAC and with a simple wave of the ISBN in front of the camera we heard a nice little tone to let us know that the number was captured. Booxster then sucks in all sorts of relevant information including book cover images and price from your choice of web sources including Amazon and the Library of Congress.

An insurance agent once told me that more and more insurance customers are creating video inventories of their belongings to make it easier to keep track of their valuables. If only Booxster could keep track of all your belongings it would make it easier to inventory all your valuables, not just your books.