From a couple of different places I’ve learned lately about something called Delicious Library 1.1. Basically, it’s a software (Max OSX) where you can use an Apple iSight camera (I suppose you could use a different camera or maybe a scanner or something) to scan the bar code on books, CDs, DVDs, and video games to catalog your library of stuff. It then puts all this information in an interface that pretty much looks like iTunes.
Personally, I think this would be pretty useful because my academic wife and I have hundreds of books (not to mention CDs and DVDs). The result is I don’t know exactly what we have (or don’t have), and I frequently don’t know where a particular copy of a book actually is. Plus I am attracted to the geek aspect of it.
Unfortunately, I don’t think my wife is persuaded. When I described this to her, she said “if you had something where you can scan the bar code and then have the whole contents of a book, then that might be useful.” Hmmm, I think that development is a few years off….