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In a recent attempt to organize my room, in particular my book shelves, I realized I need a way to catalog my books. Every trip to a book store or book sale, I end up buying at least one book that I already have and don't realize it until I'm putting them away later. Can anyone recommend a decent and hopefully free software for book cataloging?

I find alphabetical by author for fiction plus special bookcases/areas for the rest works well for me. That & putting them here on GR. I also always file ebooks by the author & series on my hard drive, too.

Becca, being a librarian, I'm aware of various cataloging software programs (though I haven't worked in cataloging for over 20 years), but they're definitely not free. In fact, I'd say they'd be prohibitively expensive for an individual to purchase. Also, they don't assign the call numbers; the humans entering the cataloging data have to do that. And when you use any fairly complex cataloging system, you also need to put call number seals on the books themselves, to keep them straight. There are supply companies that cater to libraries and sell these, but they aren't something you could very readily find in a store. Your catalog would also only be useful to you to refer to, on book shopping expeditions, if you brought a laptop along with you to access it.

Maybe just making a printed list of what you have, alphabetized by author, and within each author's section by title, would be a better route to go. You could keep the list electronically, and update your printed copy occasionally by re-printing it; but in the meantime, you could use a pen to add new books to the hard copy of the list. That kind of list could easily be carried in a typical purse, and referred to easily no matter how you arrange books on your shelves.

A friend of mine told me about a cool one for home users. It even allowed you to scan the bar codes for the ISBN & looked them up on an online DB filling in the cover for the correct edition & such. I seem to have taken it off my computer, but I'm asking to see if I can find it for you, Becca. It might just be what you're looking for.

I think it was either free with a limited number or books or maybe it was only good for 30 days or something. Anyway, I'll let you know if I find out the name.

I think I found the book database I was thinking of: Collectorz

That is the database - Collectorz. Apparently it also does films. My friend loves it for both her books & extensive DVD collection.