Need a good, inexpensive app to catalogue journal articles and books
I recomment to meet some librarians and talk with them about your requirements in more detail. There are a lot of software solutions that could fit.

I assume from what you wrote that Invenio could fulfill your requirements. It's an Open Source Software for publications and can be used for repositories and as an integrated library system. Invenio is developed by CERN as a framework and everyone can create its own overlay. I know at least one library using it with RFID but none with bar codes so far. It allows to catalogue all types of publications.