aNobii

I have tried out various mechanisms to maintain a digital copy of my book collection. After trying out several desktop software, none of them seemed to have that right set of features. Delicious Library was close, but I thought it was too much money for a library software.

Recently, I stumbled across an online place to store and manage your book collection – aNobii. I thought it was a strange name, only to learn later that this was the biological name for the book worm (Anobium Punctatum). Here is a pretty good review of aNobii. The feature list not only includes the typical – maintain a list of books, ratings, comments, groups etc, but also some neat features like the ability to swap books with other members and import a list of books from another website or even Excel.

The user interface is way too cool, albeit a little slow. The feature that I like the most is the ability to select a geographic area (based on your location from your profile), which changes the whole content of the website – the people that have joined recently, books that were added etc. I only wish these guys added support for the Tamil language.

Here is my aNobii profile. It doesn’t have all the books I’ve finished, and I think it never will. But I feel it is a good start.

If you are interested in other places where you can maintain your library, try Google Library or LibraryThing.