Book Organizer vs E-book Organizer

Most book lovers will probably think that book organizer software and e-book organizer are the same. But as managing a large number of paper books is different from management even larger number of electronic books, these two organizer programs are also different (or at least provide different features). Let's look at some cases describing how each type of software works:

e-Library database creation with E-book organizer

If you collect electronic books, you have at least a dozen of folders on your hard drive where the e-book files located. These are files of different formats, like .TXT, .PDF, .DJVU, .CHM, etc. But they all usually named with the book title. So what is the quickest way to create the e-Library database? Right! We need to scan all the folders with book files and create a database entry for each found book file. And we even can put the book title to this entry automatically.

Besides, some e-book formats (for example PDF) contain valuable book information, like ISBN and author. So, usually e-Book Organizers can retrieve this hidden information and also put it in the database.

So, do you need all these features if you collect paper books? No. But you will definitely need the following tools:

Creating paper book database in book organizer

Ok, you have several bookshelves with some hundreds of books and want to create an electronic database to control your library? Sorry, but you can't scan them with your computer program. In most cases you need to enter book titles manually to the book organizer. Of course some of book organizers provide you a possibility to enter a list of book titles and create book records in the database automatically. That helps, especially in case when you are an accurate person and already have such a list.

But if you don't, there is still a great feature that is present in few book organizers - ISBN scanner integration. As you know, each paper book has an ISBN barcode on its back cover. Having a record with an ISBN in the database, it possible to get all the rest book details (including title, author, cover image...) from the Internet. ISBN scanner is a handheld device that connects to your computer or mobile PC, scans the book barcode and transmits the ISBN code to the book organizer software.

There are even more ways to put a paper book to the computer organizer. For example - scanning book title with an image scanner. Or even transcripting the book titles after you record them with your voice. But these ways are not smart because of their complicity.

Handling ebooks in the E-book organizer

Managing ebooks is all about managing ebook files. You may need to move them from folder to folder, copy them to backups CDs, rename e-book files, change their attributes. Besides, you will definitely want to open ebook file right from the e-book manager interface. For example, to preview the book or even to read it. Moreover, you can use e-book organizer to remember the last page of the book where you finished reading it, and create bookmarks for each book. That's why the e-book organizer should create database fields for all these options. And the main field is e-book file location, of course.

Despite of the paper book organizer, the program for organizing ebooks should be ready to handle really large databases, because an average ebook collection counts thousands ebooks. That is why the book cover thumbnails in e-book organizers are usually a little smaller in order to decrease the database size.

As you own only electronic book copy, you will highly appreciate the ability to create beautiful book previews. Most e-book organizers enable you to download book covers, but Alfaebooks Manager makes it better. First, it does a good job retrieving the largest cover images from the internet sources. And second, it creates realistic 3D book models, that can be rotated in 3D-space. You can even open these 3D-books to view the available pages. The 3D models are created taking into account book real dimensions.

Managing a physical library in book organizer

What specific fields would you need for your paper book database? Of course, Book Location (on which bookshelf a book is stored), Book Dimensions, Number of Pages, Paper Type, Cover Type, Purchase Date. Even more important for the library owner is to control the book current status. Because sometimes you give a book to your friends and then you forget about it. So, most book organizers provide a Loan Manager.

Loan Manager tracks which books you loaned and to whom. It remembers loan date, due date (when your friend promised to take it back) and reminds you about it. It tracks also return date, so you can decide whether to loan a book to your friend next time. You can also view all loaned books, all overdue loans and take the corresponding actions.

There is one more feature, useful for paper book organizers. It's support for mobile devices. We already mentioned about ISBN scanners. So it is much more suitable, when you can scan book where it's located and note take each book to your computer table. The same story happens when you just need to update book information with the help of its original. Besides, sometimes you can go to a book store and buy a book that you already own. To prevent such issues, you can take your book database with you on the mobile device.

Why Alfa Ebooks Manager?

Yes, Alfa Ebooks Manager was started as software for organizing electronic books. So you can be confident that you find all needed functions for managing ebooks. But then we realized one simple thing: most people who collect ebooks also collect paper books. That’s why we constantly upgrading the functional set of our book organizer to satisfy the needs of these people.