Monday, October 23rd, 2006

LibraryThing does CueCats! (we’re even selling them)

LibraryThing makes entering your books easy, but it still takes time. A barcode scanner can be a big help. So, we’ve bought one hundred CueCat scanners (Wikipedia | more photos), and are offering them for fifteen bucks, including shipping anywhere in the United States. That’s about as good as they get on eBay. And your purchase helps the site.

So, go ahead and buy a CueCat.

Other details:

  1. We’re selling “unmodified” USB CueCats. Unmodified CueCats produce somewhat scrambled data, but we’ve put the translation right into LibraryThing’s system. This turns .C3nZC3nZC3n2D3D3DNr7DxnY.CNf7.CNbWDhfWCNvWCNnZChzZC3nZC3nZC3j0 into 7231631002. See links on Wikipedia for directions on “declawing” your CueCat for use elsewhere.
  2. LibraryThing now reads Borders product codes (eg., the code above), converting them to ISBNs (see announcement).
  3. Barcode scanning has been made easier. We’ve added a “Skip confirmation” checkbox, that allows you to scan a shelf of books without touching your mouse or keyboard. (Having done it both ways, I can tell you that CueCat works a lot better than webcam scanning.)
  4. I’ve made a CueCat help and support group.

Note: Yes, technically they’re supposed to be called “:CueCats.” I find the colon an offense against the English Language, and the company that made them went out of business, so I’m gonna leave it off.

Note: Prices and shipping rates are subject to change.

Labels: 1

2 Comments:

  1. m(A)tt says:

    Forgive me if this is covered elsewhere, but is it possible to attribute a bar code to a title in LT? I have a book here that has a readable bar code but is not found when I enter it into the Add Books field. But the title is on file and I can add it manually by typing the title into the search field.

  2. vera bradley says:

    I just got mine too and it's going to save boat loads of time. Plus it's really really cute, so you can't beat that.

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