I went to a baby shower this weekend where they asked each person to help build the new baby’s library by bringing a book instead of a card and to write something in the front of the book. I like the idea, but people tend to give the same books. This got me thinking about my own kids’ library. My older daughter loves books and going to the library to check them out, but she also has a large collection at home.

Most of our books were given to her new or handed down. My mom just retired from teaching, so she has several books to give us. I was talking about this at the baby shower and someone mentioned that I should catalog our books on my phone using an app. I’ve decided to go with Book Crawler ($1.99). I chose this one because you can scan ISBNs into it instead of entering information manually. To do this you just have to download another (free) app called pic2shop. Now, I don’t buy books for myself because I now use an e-reader (much easier reading in the dark while feeding a baby).  But another thing I liked about this app is that it syncs with Goodreads. I use Goodreads to keep track of what books I’ve read and how I rated them. I also use it to look at how others rate books when I am looking for something new. Last night I scanned the first of my three year old’s books and I was hooked. I wanted to bust into her dark room and scan them all. I had to slow myself down and tell myself that I really needed to scan them all at once when she’s not running around moving them around, so I don’t miss any or scan duplicates.

Like any good organization project that I take on, I was very excited to get started and then about half way through I wished I’d never started. It took me about an hour and a half but I got just about all of her books – 159 to be exact! Her favorites right now are Cookie’s Week, Pete the Cat, anything Curious George, Big Red Barn, Cinderella, Hop on Pop and Olivia.