Book Collection Managers for Linux

Last year I moved from one location to another, and so I was uprooted yet again. One of several moves since 2012.

It has given me the opportunity to check out various book collection managers available for Linux.

Ten years ago I had two bookshelves with over 200 books, ranging from large coffee table type publications to religious booklets. Now I've had to 'downsize' to about half of that.

Anyways, I've discovered a couple of software utils. to list, sort, vote on, my collection of books:

1. Alexandria Book Collection Manager, which has been available for years.
2. Tellico, a new software available since 2013.

Both promise to assist in tracking the books you physically own, as well as those you have read. The latter allowing you to put your favourites in a 'want' list so you can remember to purchase a copy at a later time, if need be.

Alexandria ver. 0.6.9

Alexandria just tracks books. Ones you have read, ones you want to purchase. You can arrange your collection list by title, author, publ. year., publ. co., rating, read, and want.

One of the things I like about it is the font-size of the menus is good for using over several hours while I was going thru my books, adding them to the database.

What works

Basic features like Saving (this is a database program, and it autosaves), Sorting (by clicking on the top headers), exporting to Tellico's xml-based .tc format and exporting to .csv creates a semi-colon based list which you can then import into a spreadsheet or anything else that reads in .csv format.

When it comes to adding new books, you don't have to key in all of the data, just the ISBN or the Title, or the Author, and the programme will find it for you and insert the remaining data. However, you need an Internet connection for this to work because it connects with the Library of Congress and others to import the metadata.

What doesn't work

Alexandria gives you the option to export to .bibtex format, used for bibliography work, but this didn't work and generated an error msg. "undefined method 'force_encoding' for nil:NilClass" with a 0 byte file instead. Now granted, I'm not really experienced in using bibliographic databases. But it would be nice if it did work, "just in case" I need such a feature.

Because this programme has not been updated since 2010-11 it may be a while before this error is fixed, if ever.

Tellico ver 2.3

Tellico is the second programme I tested for book managers available for Linux.

It can manage more than just books. It can also list your CDs & DVDs, Comics, and more.

What works

Importing my current Alexandria database, it found the right file, and put all the right field data in the right spot.

What doesn't work

Tellico is supposed to be able to write Reports based on your collection, arranged by Title, Author, and the other fields. However, the programme abended (crashed and disappeared) when I tried to do this. It didn't matter what kind of report I requested.