Tellico: A Collection Manager for Books/Videos/Stamps/Coins and More

For those Linux users who have chosen KDE as their desktop environment, a great program called Tellico exists to help you keep track of your collections, whether they be books, comics, videos, music, coins, games or something else entirely. Like GCStar (for Gnome), Tellico is able to query the Internet based solely on the title you input, saving loads of time and energy that would otherwise have been spent tracking down song titles, artists, actors, directors, and years.

Tellico - at least in Ubuntu - is easy to install. Simply go to the "Add/Remove..." option in the KMenu (if using Kubuntu), or the Applications menu (if using Gnome), and search for tellico. Select it, hit the button to install, and within minutes (or seconds, depending on your Internet connection speed), you'll be able to start a new collection database.

Tellico is incredibly easy to set up, and even easier to use. To start a new collection, hit the starred piece of paper icon in the main toolbar. This will cause a drop-down menu to appear, listing your collection options. In addition to the supported collection types listed above, Tellico also supports Bibliography, Sports Cards, Stamps and Wine.

After selection a category, Tellico is ready to search the Internet for whatever you want to enter in your collection. If you are building a movie database, simply type in the name of the movie you want to track. Tellico automatically searches Amazon.com by default, and spits back a list of all the results. For instance, searching for 'bourne identity' reveals quite a lengthy list, including different versions of the film. This includes both widescreen and full screen DVD versions, the HD DVD version, the collector's edition, and more. In my experience, searching Amazon.com provides a ton of results, which is nice, as it lets you put the exact edition of the movie you own into the database.