Absolute Media Library for Windows

Absolute Media Library is a basic program for keeping track of all types of collections. Although it offers a lot of options for organization, its incessant error messages make it hard to like.

The program's interface is simple, and although it's not the most intuitive, it's easy enough to figure out. You can enter media of all sorts, specifying format, genre, value, and other details. In addition to keeping an inventory of items, you can create a database of borrowers and keep track of items that get loaned out, which is a nice feature to have in small libraries and corporate environments. Although the program is generally easy to use and seems to do what it claims, it was disappointing that so many actions resulted in multiple nonsensical error messages. These errors didn't seem to affect the program's operation--clicking OK made them go away--but they were still annoying. The program's Help file is well written and thorough, but it didn't offer any tips for troubleshooting the problem. The program also doesn't offer any features we haven't seen in other programs, and lacks some common ones. Similar utilities let you add images, but Absolute Media Library doesn't seem to follow suit.

Absolute Media Library is free to try, but the trial version limits users to 100 records. The program comes as a zip file and installs a desktop icon without asking, although it does uninstall cleanly. Its error messages constitute a serious flaw. We do not recommend this program.