[cozworth]

If you have thousands of titles now and don't want to do any manual input than I hope you already have some of the info stored into some sort of organized fashion.

An Excel spreadsheet will take care of most of what you would need. However, the choice of your database will determine if you have to do any additional work. Every database I have worked with has a feature to inport a spreadsheet.

However, if you don't have even that much - well....you waited too long to start now!

Well, no, not really.

I have tried using search programs to fill certain info but they leave a lot to be desired. For example...if you want to know what publishing house put out a certain book, that info will always be available online. I tend to leave fields like that blank in historical data. I just load the info when it is easy for me at a later date - or not at all. But - when I loaded a book into my hardrive and what changes were made to the format etc...that is info that I would have to enter myself. for the purpose of knowing what I have and what I can do with it , it is far more important to me. I just make sure I enter complete data on new entries as I get them.

The other issue is that search/pick data is not always correct. While I would likely be inclined to use such a function if I were in your position, I would be cautious about accepting the data provided as gospel.

If you have 5000 titles...one way or the other...you have a job ahead of you.

Just keep in mind that as negative as this post may sound I am really just envious or your library!