Catalog Your CDs Using Readerware
What an amazing organizational tool! Have you ever wanted to let a student listen to a CD recording of a certain piece and spent a great deal of time looking at the back of each CD cover, only to discover that you must not have it after all? You absolutely must check out the Readerware software! Several months ago I purchased it with the intent of using it to catalog all of my books. Just a couple of weeks ago, I recalled that there was an audio cataloging capability as well. So, I opened it up on my computer and was overjoyed to find that it worked like a charm!
Here’s the amazing part…all you have to do is scan the bar code on the back of the CD case and all the data will be retrieved and entered automatically! (A few of my CDs have had unrecognizable bar codes, so I entered those in manually, but the rest have been scanning in automatically just fine!)
Here’s a screen shot of how the collection is organized once the data has been entered:
Here’s a screen shot of how the info for each CD is organized:
If you want only the CD cataloging software, it’s $40. But if you are also interested in the book and DVD/VHS cataloging software, you can get the whole bundle of three for $75. I love to be organized and to have ready access to information, so this has been a very worthy investment for me! Now if only they had such a software for piano music… 
October 10th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
How do you scan the bar code? Do you need a special piece of hardware?
I’ve been cataloging my CD’s for a couple of years using Microsoft Access. I’m up to over 500 pieces, and it’s so nice to be able to look up composer and know if I have the composition a student wants. It’s all been by hand, and a scanner would have been so delightful!
October 10th, 2005 at 9:41 pm
Jean~I can totally identify! I have close to that many CDs that I’ve also inputted manually into an Access database.
The software came with a free cue cat scanner and that’s what I’ve used to scan in both books and CDs. What a time saver it will be - though I am still trying to figure out when I’m going to transfer all my previously entered data into this database!