When I had ~1000 books, I catalogued them to avoid buying books I already had and to ease lending them to my friends. Back in the pre-smart phone days, there w

When I had ~1000 books, I catalogued them to avoid buying books I already had and to ease lending them to my friends. Back in the pre-smart phone days, there was a Mac app that used a webcam to scan book barcodes. The author wrote a neat article on how it was better to scan barcodes really fast and throw away the noise than to try to scan the barcode perfectly the first time.