Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Keeping Track of your Library

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Keeping Track of your Library

    Here's a question for those of you who are voracious readers... a demographic I imagine someday rejoining: How do you keep track of all your books?

    Do you keep a spreadsheet on your computer? A handwritten list in a notebook? Just keep them organized on a shelf in a specific order? Do you loan or trade books often enough to have to keep track of that activity as well?

    Of course, it's inevitable that the camraderie and interaction sparked by books would be a likely match with the exposion of online services, so there are several that are aimed at meeting the needs of book lovers and their friends. Our own Linkmeister is a passionate user of LibraryThing, which has been around forever. I've now been toying with some newer "Web 2.0" entries into the space, including Shelfari and GoodReads. Even Google has added a 'My Library' feature to its Google Book Search service, though it's not quite as pretty nor easy to share with others.

    Have you tried these? Would you try these? Just how do you keep track of all those titles?

    We've had other threads that touched on this a bit:

  • #2
    Re: Keeping Track of your Library

    Originally posted by pzarquon View Post
    Just keep them organized on a shelf in a specific order?
    Relatively speaking. And it's about 30 shelves at present. For the most part, organized by subject - but I'm not a stickler about it.

    (Now, records and CDs, that's a different kettle of highly-organized fish altogether.)

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Keeping Track of your Library

      Isn't there another one too? I can't remember the name of it. Maybe it was "Library Thing".

      If the price isn't too bad, I would sure consider it. I just haven't yet because I'm too busy reading!

      I imagine it'd be very helpful when loaning out books, too. Keep track of who you've loaned books to or who's ended up kakaroaching them!

      I think I'll go check out those links; I've got so many books scattered from here to eternity. No pun intended. Not really.
      Aloha,
      Mokihana

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Keeping Track of your Library

        I have a huge library. Book shelves in every room, not to mention 3 bookcases full of technical books in my office. I love old books. The older the better. I inherited boxes of books dating from the 1800's through the 1960's. I have a special bookcase designed especially for the old books. Actually, my husband built it. I have all kinds of "popular science" books and physics text books from the late 1800's and the 1920's. Also lots of fluff reading from the old days. I also have lots of more modern books , not to mention all the paperbacks. Some of the stuff should be donated to a library or museum (the oldest is the family bible dating from the 1500's). I don't have any type of organizing going on with this except in my head. I do separate out according to age but not by title or subject or author. But that is more for the protection of the books themselves. I would never put any lists like that on line. Not for any other reason that I just don't have that kind of patience.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Keeping Track of your Library

          When I was kid, I organized my books by series and the order they came out. Berenstain Bears, Little Golden Books, then later Baby-Sitters Club. Nowadays I don't have a huge book collection, so organize my books by size -- taller books toward the left of the shelf, smaller ones to the right.

          Originally posted by pzarquon View Post
          Do you keep a spreadsheet on your computer? A handwritten list in a notebook?
          I've never kept track of my book collection, but this reminded me that I used to keep a spreadsheet of my CD collection. I stopped when I reached the 100's.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Keeping Track of your Library

            Unfortunately, I've moved a lot in my life, and everytime I move it seems like I lose books. I'm planning on moving to Hawaii next spring and have come to the conclusion that I'll probably be leaving most of my books "in storage" (aka my mom's house) because it's less hassle.

            Sadly, most of my books are in stacks and piles around my apartment because my bookshelves keep collapsing. Which is really frightening when a shelf full of hardcovers crashes down on you! Someday if I stop moving so much maybe I'll invest in some good sturdy metal shelves.

            My step-dad used to keep a binder that cataloged his CD collection, but once again, he lost it and a bunch of CDs in a move.
            Four Thousand Miles (blog) | MacRatLove (comic)
            Better Holes and Garbage (rats) | Perfectly Inadequate (music)

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Keeping Track of your Library

              I thoroughly love LibraryThing, although I haven't gone down to the nails and figured out all of its features and stuff. Particularly the widgets for websites. I've got a ghetto modification on the "recent book(s)" widget to display my current read. However, that prevents me from entering any new books I happen to buy and put in queue for reading.

              But the book suggester tool makes up for it. Not to mention the site doesn't take horribly long on my iPhone through EDGE (which I've been using almost exclusively just for masochistic reasons >_>).

              I might give the other sites a try.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Keeping Track of your Library

                I don’t . . . mainly because I’ve always lived in small apartments, and had to get rid of most of my books because of moving and the need to free up more living space. I would love to be like Acousticlady (I’m a little bit jealous of her library ... a bible dating back to 1500s!).

                My home library has been reduced to eight shelves, organized primarily by subject matters: Hawaiian books, Latin American literature (I love Latin American literature), Japanese literature, and American/other literature. But these shelves are dwarfed by the stacks of books on either side of my bed—by far the larger of my collection—arranged in no order whatsoever.

                Long ago, I tried to compile a list of my “library” in Endnote Plus, which is a bibliography software, but I was disheartened when I had to create a field for titles that I, for one reason or another, had to get rid of, so I stopped entering data. But all of what I initially entered are still there, trapped in my old Mac Powerbook 180 (vintage 1992), which died this past year because of a dead battery. (They don’t make those batteries anymore.)

                By the way, Library Thing looks good. I might have to take a closer look at it ... and maybe make another effort at cataloging again.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Keeping Track of your Library

                  I use Delicious Library http://www.delicious-monster.com/ for the mac to log my CD's and DVD's. You can use it for books too (but I don't). The cool thing is that you use your webcam as a barcode scanner. You just hold up a book or cd or dvd to the webcam and it reads the barcode and looks up everything on Amazon's database.

                  You can also "check out" items to your friends. It will remind you when items are "overdue".

                  You can't use a regular webcam, though. It has to be an iSite or other firewire camera. I use a firewire camera called pyro.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Keeping Track of your Library

                    For Windows users, you might want to look at BookCAT. While it seems like overkill, the fact it can take a ISBN number and pull all kinds of information about it makes data entry quite easy. It's probably easier to set up then a spreadsheet.

                    One day I'll get back into it's brother, CATraxx, for my CD collection. I can't keep my collection in my head anymore.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      State librarian asks for $1M security boost against COVID pandemic crime wave (khon2.com)

                      Do people read in the library anymore?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Most of my hardcopy books are in off-site storage. One of these days I would need to replace my standalone Nook tablet for my e-books for now my Windows desktop has them available as well.

                        Comment

                        Working...
                        X