Records sufficient for our "library" of >2000 books was maintained in Word, and was sufficient for our needs.

More complex stuff, I'd just put in Excel.

When a local book dealer came to inventory our collections he arrived with a hand scanner and scanned titles and ISBN numbers, and indicated that when he plugged the scanner into his compute it did an automatic search for anyone who'd requested the book from "any of several large dealers," and gave him a price/value estimate for anything else that might be of interest. He came back a couple of days later and "picked" about 10 percent of "her valuable books" but wasn't interested in any of mine. (She had already segregated the ones she "couldn't part with" and I didn't expect any interest in mine.)

I have no idea what program(s) he was using, but he seemed to be quite efficient - and gave us what we considered fair prices for what he took.

The program most suitable probably depends on the kind of material in the collection, with gun books not of particular interest to general collectors or dealers. Because of the narrow subject category, I'd suggest that before going too deep he needs to correspond with some like the NRA, Guns & Ammo, and others with a "dense population" (not a pun) of persons likely to be interested in what he wants to market, to identify established dealers in material of the "right kind." Once major dealers in the "correct trade" are known, they probably can provide a lot of help regarding what information needs to be recorded - which of course will affect what program is going to work best.

(The gun interests I suggested are US based. Elsewhere there are others, I'm sure.)

He might even be able to find someone like the fellow who culled our junkpile, willing to scan the pertinent information from all of it into a ready-made data base. Efficient large dealers very much prefer that smaller dealers have their stuff in a format the same as - or very similar to - what they use. Even if you're not dealing with other dealers, they'll find it on the web, and will be much more likely to bid if they see the forms of information they're accustomed to.

John