Yesterday I was able to scan all my CD collection into Delicious Library using the CueCat. I was surprised at how good the CueCat worked. Since it cost me only $10 I was expecting it to be inaccurate and unreliable but out of the over 300 CDs I scanned I had maybe only 5 instances where the CueCat couldn’t read the barcode and those were often because of non standard sized barcodes (ie very small) or because they were inverted barcodes (white stripes instead of black). For $10 the CueCat is a real steal.
I had some issues with Delicious Library though. I was able to scan the barcodes of most of my alternative music without any problems and I wasn’t expecting any problems since most of my alternative music is made up of mainstream stuff like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails etc.. When it came to my downbeat music I was expecting Delicious Library to have problems since the majority of the stuff are low profile and from small labels but since Delicious Library connects to a wide variety of sources it didn’t have a problem recognizing the CDs and loading up their info with CD covers. Sometimes though Delicious Library would load details from Amazon.co.uk for example where they wouldn’t have a CD cover while if Delicious loaded it up from Amazon.com it would have gotten a CD cover so I had to manually go to the Amazon.com website, take the ASIN number and dump it into the library myself to reload the info to be able to solve this issue. It did this less then 10 times but it does slow things down.
The big problems with Delicious Library came when I was trying to add my old techno stuff from the early 90s. The majority of the labels and CDs don’t exists anymore and Delicious Library had a hard time finding the CDs at all in the online databases yet alone finding the CD covers. So I was forced to add around 5 CDs manually because they didn’t exists online while the rest of the CDs which it did find didn’t have CD covers, but thanks to a wonderful website called Discogs, I was able to find the CD covers and drag and drop them into Delicious Library.
Today I will start adding my books to Delicious and then will follow with my DVD’s and videogames. I don’t know what I will do with all this information when I am done but I am sure I will figure something out. Oh and by the way, you can scan barcodes right after each other without having to wait for Delicious to load up the info. This saved me a lot of time since I just scanned CDs non stop without delay.
4 replies on “CueCat & Delicious Library Update”
I wonder if theres software like that for other stuff, because practically everything now has a barcode. Scanning your camera, umbrella, laptop, shoes, and so on…that would be cool.
yeah thats what i was thinking to. when i first got the cuecat the first thing i scanned was a felt pen with the barcode on it.
Good piece of software, but I was turned off by the fact that they make money through the contents of your library by generating amazon refferer links.
Personally I prefer using https://43.allconsuming.net/ and you dont even need a barcode scanner.
Cheers.
you dont need a barcode scanner for Delicious either. I just checked out the link u sent me and it doesnt have as many features as Delicious and you can’t use a barcode scanner which makes adding 1000 items a pain in the ass.
I really dislike the fact in Delicious if you want to check out your item on amazon that they get referel off you. But its not a big deal for me since before i purchase stuff i usually use my referel code.