Book Cataloging Apps

Keep Track Of Your Important Physical Books

Overview

Your iDevice holds all of your important data. Why not also use your iPhone and iPad to keep track of your book collection? With these book cataloging apps you can keep track of your growing library, track your reading habits, and keep tabs on those books that disappeared when you lent them out to a friend. Even if you are moving your bookshelf to the Kindle and iBooks, these apps can track all of your literature in one place.

Essential Apps

$1.99
iBookshelf

by Josh Pressnell

iBookshelf is an essential book cataloging app due to its batched barcode scanning, Dropbox support for backup and syncing between your devices, and its inexpensive price tag for a universal app. iBookshelf can also interface with OCLC to find nearby libraries that house the books in your database. All of the database fields are searchable, including comments. In addition to Dropbox support, your database can also be emailed as a .csv attachment. Once you've spent hours cataloging your books, you can rest assured that your data is not locked in to one device.
$1.99
Book Crawler

by Jaime Stokes

Book Crawler features many of the same advantages as iBookshelf, such as being a universal app, OCLC library support, .csv export, and coverflow. With the added free app pic2shop, you can also add books via barcode scanner. Book Crawler now has Dropbox support for syncing and shines with a unique and enjoyable interface. Users also now have the capability to view their database via web browser over WiFi. If you want a cataloging app with a bit more interface flair, then Book Crawler is an essential cataloging app.

Notable Apps

$3.99
BooksApp 2 Pro

by Guillermo Gonzalez

Many of the book cataloging apps need an external app for barcode scanning or simply don't support scanning, but BooksApp has a built-in scanner function. It only supports 13-digit ISBN barcodes but it is nice to have this functionality within the app. BooksApp is limited to exporting only to Google Docs. The interface is simple but clean and also has features for organizing books into collections and tracking lending.
$2.99
Book Keeper

by Netwalk

Book Keeper most closely resembles Delicious Library on your iPhone and iPad. The interface is beautiful and is enjoyable for browsing your bookshelf. If you use Delicious Library on your Mac you can even import your database into Book Keeper. The app supports backups to Dropbox and the ability to export to a PDF as well.

Decent Apps

Free
EasyBib, for iPad

by Imagine Easy Solutions

EasyBib is an old favorite that can help create citations from books, magazines, journals and websites. Well, that service is now on the iPad and supports great features that the website couldn't, like barcode scanning. While it is not primarily designed for book cataloging, it is a great choice if you need quick citations from your collection often despite its subpar interface.
$4.99
iCollect Books HD

by Hooked In Motion

iCollect Books belongs to a suite of apps for cataloging your media. The iPhone and iPad versions are sold separately and if purchased together become a relatively expensive investment compared to the other universal book cataloging apps. If you do own both versions you can take advantage of syncing your database to the icollectmedia.com website. This will enable syncing your data between devices. However, this method will not sync "no barcode" items, so then you have to rely on exporting and importing text files. All in all, the syncing solution is inelegant.
$1.99
Juicy Library

by Tapfuze

Juicy Library is beautiful to look at and has built in barcode scanning, but is unfortunately plagued by stability issues and lack of export options. You can backup your database to a computer but not to specific file formats for moving your data to other applications. Once items have been imported they are not easily editable and there isn't any support for keeping track of lent items.
$4.99
BookBuddy

by Kimico, Ltd.

BookBuddy is a simple iPhone book cataloging app. It supports tracking book lending and uses search to find books for adding to the database. It doesn't support barcode scanning or exporting of data for backup. It is a decent app but is expensive compared to other apps in this category.
$3.99
My Library

by Josh Pressnell

If you like iBookshelf then you will enjoy My Library because it is basically the same app. The only difference is that you can use My Library to catalog your DVDs and CDs as well as your books. The interface is identical with the exception of supporting more media types.