Organise Your Books, Movies, Music And Video Games With Libib

Android/iOS: I have a reasonable but not overwhelming amount of media: Mostly books, followed by video games, followed by some collectable vinyls and CDs that I keep around. I also have friends who have rooms full of stuff: Stacks of books and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that are nearly bursting from overuse.

All of us could benefit from checking out Libib, a free service you can use to scan and catalogue your books, movies, music and video games.

Sign up for a “standard” account on Libib — the pro version costs $US99 ($140) per year — and you’ll be able to register up to 5000 items within up to 100 different “libraries”, or groupings of stuff.

Setting up new libraries is an easy process via Libib’s website or its apps for both iOS and Android. (I prefer to use the latter, and I’ll explain why in a bit.)

Once you’ve created a sample library and given it a clever name, it’s time for the fun part: Summoning your inner Belle and organising your stacks of stuff.

On the iOS app, that’s as easy as tapping on your library and then tapping on the big plus icon in the upper-right corner of the app. When you do, you’ll be given the option to scan your items’ barcodes (yes!) or enter their details manually (no!).

Dorky as it sounds, Libib’s barcode-scanning functionality is a ton of fun to use. It’s incredibly speedy and didn’t miss the mark with any of the books I tried. Each successful scan gets a satisfying “beep”, and you’ll be scanning multiple items faster than a typical experience at the self-checkout lane.

Libib’s manual entry option, though much slower, is great for when you have rarer items that don’t come with barcodes. And this is all on you. Libib doesn’t perform any searches or lookups based on partial data you enter, so make sure you spell the title and author right (for your own records).

Once you have your book collection scanned — or at least a few — you can easily view your collection on Libib’s website or app. Pull up a book, for example, and you’ll see its cover (imported or shot manually); a thorough description of the book’s contents; key details such as its ISBN number, page count and publisher; and any reviews that you (not others) have written for the title.

You can also set a status for the book — “Not Begun”, “In Progress”, “Abandoned” or “Completed” — as well as a rating (one to five stars), custom tags (to help you find similar items later), and any notes you want to add (favourite quotes, the page number you stopped reading at, and so on).

In addition to tagging, you can create custom groups for items based on any theme you want (“stuff I swear I’ll get to”) and indicate how many copies of the book you own. Pay for Libib’s pro service, and you’ll even be able to track who you lent all your media to. Don’t let anyone walk away with one of your favourites.


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