If we have one thing in common, most of us have an extensive media collection. This can include your CDs, books, DVDs, video games, as well as your paintings. The problem is, knowing, remembering your catalogue and who is still borrowing one of your old DVDs. If you’re one of these people that likes to lend someone an audio CD, you may find that they’re not always so keen on giving it back.

Getting your media collection catalogued is the biggest problem. You could setup your own database and input the information manually. The other alternative is one of the many media cataloging applications available for your PC.

If you have a Mac, you may be aware of the superb Delicious Library. This tool enables you to scan in the barcode from your media collection, extract the information from your local Amazon, then stack the products on a virtual shelf. MediaMan is a very similar application for the PC.

Once you’ve scanned in the barcode from your DVDs, CDs and other media, MediaMan will take the title, description, artwork and other elements from the Amazon database. You can then assign tags for each product. For instance, you may want to tag ‘war’ to some of your DVDs, so when you want to watch a war movie, simply enter the tag and associated DVDs will be displayed.

You can also track and show borrowed items within MediaMan. Better still, you can even associated the relevant audio and video files to each imported media, so you can play the movie directly from your catalogue.