How to Use AI to Inventory Your Books (with Real Photos)
aka using tech advances to make adult life less daunting
N.B. This is a part of an ongoing series that I am making on how to prepare for emergencies and possible catastrophic events using technology to facilitate the process.
During all the recent catastrophic events of this past year in both North Carolina, Tennessee and California, it came to my attention that a crucial aspect of having your possessions replaced is to have a clear inventory of those items. For my neurodivergent brain, I cannot think of a task more tedious and mind-numbing than writing down all the items, then transferring them one by one to a spreadsheet that would likely rarely be updated or everfinished. So I did what any efficient and inherently lazy person would do - I tried to figure out a hack. Turns out AI can help with this problem.
How to Use AI to Inventory Your Books (with Real Photos)
When starting my inventorying journey, I of course started with the most locally placed, and personally valuable collection I have, books.
Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough, with real photos of my highly eclectic collection.
Step 1: Take a Clear Photo of Your Shelf
Start by photographing your bookshelf. Take the photo at an angle that captures the spines of the books clearly. Good lighting helps—natural daylight is best to avoid glare or shadows.
Alt text: In my case, I took a photo of a wooden shelf that included titles like “Ayurvedic Healing” by David Frawley and “The Universal One” by Walter Russell.
If you have multiple shelves, start with one. The process becomes repeatable once you’ve got your workflow down.
Step 2: Upload the Image to an AI Assistant
Use an AI assistant like ChatGPT (with image capabilities) or Google Lens. I used ChatGPT, uploading the image and asking:
“Can you inventory this shelf?”
In just a few seconds, the assistant generated a tidy list of the books it could recognize. It captured most of the spines clearly, extracting both title and author, and formatted them like this:
Title Author
Ayurvedic Healing David Frawley
Animal Speak Ted Andrews
Planetary Herbology Michael Tierra
The Universal One Walter Russell
Becoming Vegetarian Vesanto Melina & Brenda Davis
Note: If some spines are blurry, the AI may return “Unknown” as a placeholder. You can always double-check those manually.
Step 3: Request Tab-Delimited or Spreadsheet Format
Next, ask the AI to format the data in a way that can be pasted directly into a spreadsheet. A simple command like:
“Can you give me this data in a tab-delimited table with no extra spaces?”
will get you clean, copy-paste-friendly text.
You can paste this directly into Google Sheets or Excel, and voilà—your inventory is now searchable, sortable, and shareable.
Step 4: Export to Google Sheets (or excel)
If you’re using Google Sheets:
1. Open a new sheet.
2. Copy and paste the tab-delimited text.
3. Use “Split text to columns” (under the Data menu) if needed.
If you’re working with a large library and prefer automation, you can even have the AI generate a .tsv file for download, which can be uploaded directly to Google Sheets or other cataloging software.
Step 5: Add Tags, Notes, or Categories
Once your list is digital, you can customize it to your needs. Add columns for:
• Genre
• Topic
• Read/Unread
• Lent out to…
• Notes or Quotes
This is especially helpful for researchers, healers, and collectors who want more than just a static list.
Bonus: Organizing Books with AI Help
Not sure how to categorize that mix of spiritual texts, herbal encyclopedias, and mind-body books? Ask the AI to group or tag your titles by theme. For example:
“Can you categorize these books by theme—herbalism, spirituality, metaphysics, etc.?”
The assistant might group them like:
• Herbalism: “Planetary Herbology,” “Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs”
• Spirituality: “Kundalini Tantra,” “A Soul in Peace”
• Metaphysics: “The Universal One,” “Book of Wisdom”
Final Thoughts
Inventorying your library doesn’t have to be a tedious, manual task. With AI, a camera, and a spreadsheet, you can digitize your shelves with surprising ease—even if you’ve got a mix of obscure, indie, or vintage books. You could also turn this into a mechanism to track where the books you loaned or gavegiven away have ended up. I have a friend who takes a picture of every book that he loans, which is a stop gap for a better system like this.
In the end, we can take this opportunity to help us reflect on all we own, be prepared should we ever have to replace our book collection and maybe, if just for a moment, stop the endless flow of intake with no heed for what we already have under our fingertips.