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Solving the Home Library Problem?
zgrossbart asks: "My wife and I have about 3,500 books. We can't find anything. All the books are in random order. We want to find a solution for organizing our books. We have a barcode scanner, but I'm not sure the best way to use it. I want a solution that is easy to maintain going forward and makes books easy to find. I also want the data in an open format. I'm think about using MySQL right now, but I'm open to other suggestions. What software do other people use to organize their home libraries?"
I bootlegged a copy of AV Cataloger and liked it so much that I bought it. I recommend it to all, but it is a Windows-based program.
/. readers don't like closed-source Windows-only software, so I'd welcome an F/OSS solution just like this. Until then, this is a worthy purchase.
I'm sure you can write your own, but AV Cataloger hits all the sites to gain information -- even Amazon for books. It also helps to keep track of what you loan to people (my mother is the worst thief my latest report shows!).
I know
If you've got a Mac (a big IF, I know), Delicious Library is the way to go. I've not seen its equal for Mac or PC. Barcode scanning (I use a modified USB CueCat), auto-querying for book covers and other information, borrowers, and so forth. Works for books, CDs, video games, DVDs, whatever. Worth every penny!
There is quite a large amount of open-source software available for library management. A full-blown ILS might be overkill for a personal collection, but I'd suggest checking out Koha and the listings at OSS4Lib.
I use Readerware.
Spent a couple of evenings scanning in my books, it then went and got all the details from Amazon etc and I ended up with a nice database of all the books.
It was a bit slack on some of the old and obscure stuff - but if it's in an online bookstore, it will usually pick it up.
I haven't tried it for CDs or DVDs - I use DVD Profiler for that.
HTH
T
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
My wife's a librarian, and she would laugh at the idea of using LoC numbers for a collection this small. Dewey's far simpler to figure out mentally for a collection that isn't the size of your local state university's. Heck, for a collection this size, you could go with the standard used book store layout. Just use general catagories and label the shelves so you know what they are. History (maybe break down into Ancient, European, American, etc. if you have a lot of history books), Religion, Science, Math, Art, etc. Fiction could be seperated into genres like Mystery, Fantasy, and Romance, or just organized alphabetically. The beauty is, you probably already know where these books should be catagorized, and you could probably do it all in the span of a few hours. Trying to do anything else, including assigning Dewey call numbers, is going to take a lot more time and effort for not much more benefit.
Here is the link: http://www.librarything.com/. This will help you with the cataloging of the books. As far as organizing, hrmmm, why not organize by color - that's how some women I know would do it :D
So, did you purchase your Dewey Decimal licence, or do we have to send the Library Police after you?
Hint: the Dewey Decimal System is not free to use...
This is one of the more idiotic ask slashdot questions. It's like typing up a grocery list on your computer, a complete fucking waste of time.
Why don't you just alphabetize the damned books and go on with your life? It's just like a dorky geek to waste countless hours unecessarily using technology when a simple non technical method is perfectly usable and a hell of a lot faster.
A good point. That's why I encourage people to use the Library of Congress system. No license to use it and all books have the same number no matter what library you're in. In fact, most books list their Library of Congress system number on the inside from cover (or one of the front pages).
Smeghead every day of the week.
Yep, that's what we do at home. We've got some 5500 books, and they're broken down into Fiction and Non-Fiction. Fiction has two walls, and is all alphabetized by author. Non-fiction has one wall, and is categorized by subject. Throw down a rug, plant the futon in the middle, and leave a wake-up call for Spring...
WARNING: if you move, personally pack the library, or you will spend far more weekends than you would like alphabetizing books (and buying bookcases).
Just junk food for thought...
Please consider joining Bibliophile on sourceforge, which is a collection of a lot of the other open source literature management software. The effort is fairly informal, but we'd like to share tools for importing, exporting, and cross-site searching.
(FWIW: I'm involved with refbase)
seriously
donate all your books except the regularly used reference texts and the favorite ones that get read and re-read and support your local library.
the books will be there for you to use, and for others, and they already have a filing system.
tchao
Are you maybe thinking of the Library Hotel which got into trouble with OCLC, who owns the trademark / copyright to the Dewey Decimal System?
As far as I can tell the only cost you might run into in trying to categorize with the Dewey Decimal system is if you want to purchase one of OCLC's classification indexes.
But maybe you're thinking of a different instance in which OCLC required payment for use of the classification system for a small private collection. If that's the case, I'd be genuinely interested to hear more about it.
That's a total no-brainer.
Delicious Library. Period. No other Library programm or solution comes even close. It's the companies only product, sells for 40$ and it's a programm that justifies buying a Mac just for the purpose of running it. It's that good.
It has everything you could wish for and loads more. Among the most notable features are bot's that spider the web (amazon, etc.) for meta info on your books based on the barcode (including grabbing cover-pictures), option to use a webcam as barcode scanner and exports to data formats of your choice.
Really, looking any further is pointless. DL+Mac Mini+Barcode Reader or Webcam will take you farther than any other solution you could even dream of.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
When I bought Delicious Library, I wound up spending all night scanning in all my books.
Note: some items trigger easter eggs when you add them to your library.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
On the Macintosh there is a program called Delicious Library that lets you use your iSight web cam to read in the bar codes. It then looks up the product at Amazon and stores it in your "library." You could scan in all your books (and movies and CD's) and sort them by Author or my Title to see which you like best. Then file them accordingly. It gets the book cover off the web too and gives you a virtual book shelf. The software also lets you check-out the book and track that activity. http://www.delicious-monster.com/ This program pretty much rules.
-Well, it may not take a Rocket Scientist to figure this stuff out, but I figure it can't hurt
Delicious Library is an excellent OSX application for organizing your books, music, games, and movies. It has support for scanning barcodes (even with a web cam).
I use it, myself, and it's extremely useful.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
From the their self-description:
It is intended to manage a small library or documentation center: at 3500 books, you are still considered a pretty small documentation center... But it could ease a lot the management of those books, the friends borowing, etc.
They have a lot of success-story. My librarian wife finded it nice when I showed it to her. Even though she refuse to keep woking at home organizing our books. Damn!
Of course, to really help keeping track of the books, you will need a good physical organisation too. But since Koha can talk Z3950, it may be possible to obtain the classification professionnaly done by big libraries: making Dewey or LC classification is _hard_. Librarian don't usually have master degree for nothing... So I would suggest refraining from going that work yourself ; pick a simple organization, since 3500 books is not that big, when you think about it and compare with _real_ libraries...
Good luck!
If you already have 3500 books, you're probably a collector, not a "tosser" at heart. You need to consider how your system will accommodate future expansion to possibly tens of thousands of books. In no particular order:
Here are a couple specific strategies that have helped me and my wife:
You are right in some ways: there are http://www.snopes.com/katrina/charity/library.asp institutions that really would appreciate secondhand books: hospitals, Salvation Army, schools, homes for the elderly. Better contact them first before showing up with several cubic meters of Louis Lamour pockets though :)
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Buying Dead-tree books is fucking stupid ,it harms nature
Nope. Buying Dead-tree books is good for the environment. Just think of all the CO2 that tree soaked up from the atmosphere and has now sequestered (as cellulose) in that book.
Help reduce greenhouse gases, buy and keep dead-tree editions.
-- Alastair