April 7, 2008 9:06 pm

Media Management

How sad is it that for years, I’ve dreamed of having my own CD/DVD/vinyl/book database that catalogs our vast media collection?

I would love to be able to check my media database for someting to make sure we don’t have it before we accidentally buy another copy because it was on sale. Most recently, we found a copy of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles for $1 at our local Goodwill and snapped it up, only to make it home and realize that I had purchased it at Powell’s a number of years ago for $3.50.

Dang.

I would love to have a scan-thingy I could beep everything and it would keep a catalog of what sort of media it was, title, author or band, that sort of thing. Failing that, I could type it in, but it would be easily searchable and maybe I’d have an image of the cover in there too.

Years ago, I actually sat down and designed a giant database that this information would go into, but I made it unnecessarily complicated (adding in band members by year and making the group different depending on which members were in it at which point in time – what was I thinking?) and I never got around to designing the interface where you’d actually put in the information.

Anybody else? I have a feeling that there is a large, untapped market of twenty-somethings with expendable income that would love some kind of easy-to-use media catalog, like a library database.

Edited to add: The lovely Amanda suggested MediaShelf, and after installing it and testing it out, it looks to be exactly what I needed. YAY! Problem solved.

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4 Comments

  • Amanda says:

    I know that MediaShelf (prism-perfect.net) is popular, and Jem’s BellaBiblio as well.

    Were you looking for something online based though? Or something more along the lines of an old-fashioned card catalog?

  • Meggan says:

    Oooo MediaShelf looks wonderful! I hadn’t heard of it before. BellaBiblio is more of a ratings script; I’d just want it to track what I own, not so much what I think of it.

    It wouldn’t have to be online, though I guess that would come in handy if you wanted to check it remotely.

    Thanks, Amanda! I will play around with MediaShelf and see what I think.

  • Melissa says:

    I’ve never tried MediaShelf but I’ve been thinking about it. I’d love to keep a record of what all I have too, I keep forgetting it all!

    Are you going to keep it just for your records or make it a public feature on your site?

  • Meggan says:

    I was thinking mostly just for my own records, although since it’s on my site, theoretically you could go take a look now if you knew the URL. I’m not convinced people would find it thrilling to browse through which records I own. ;)