In a lot of my books currently, the metadata (title, author) is included in the file path. I'd like a utility to be able to be configured to parse this. How people have organized books tends to be individual, so it would need to be configurable. In my case, I have all my books in a "books" directory, and within that, I have directories named after each author, in Last, First format. Within those directories, things vary a bit more, but usually there is a level of format directories, and then within that, filenames may include the author's name as well as the name of the book.
So in my case, I'd like to be able to configure the indexing utility to check within a given directory and assume that the next directory level down will provide the author's name, then search recursively within those directories for all files and remove the author's name from the filename to get the book title, if appropriate.
Once the author's name and book title are available, of course, it would be great to be able to get other info from an online database.
One other feature I'd like is the ability to enter or import my paper book collection, and tie my paper inventory to my electronic inventory. I'm gradually trying to replace all my paper books, especially fiction, with ebook versions. I have Readerware and a barcode scanner, so I plan to have a full online inventory of my paper books "soon." Readerware has some nice lookup features that might be able to provide me with an estimate of the resale value of my paper books, so it might also be useful to have a system be able to look up and store the lowest cost available (of a specified format or formats) to purchase an ebook replacement. I could then calculate how much it would cost, net, to sell my paper books and buy commercial versions of ebook replacements (when available).