Slashdot Mirror
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?"
If you love something, set it free!
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
I'm actually working on a project that EXACTLY fits your problem. Please check it out at homelibrary at sourceforge. I've only just started the project, it's not very easy to install right now, and there are a few bugs, but I started it with the exact problem in mind.
It's as easy as that. I have about that many, and I can always find things. My mother has about twice as many, and she can always find things. You don't need high-tech solutions, all you need is a certain level of self-discipline.
High-tech solutions are also very brittle. If you have to tell the system whenever you take a book off the shelf or put it back on, then you'll lose books, because at some point you will forget, and the system will have an incorrect view of where the book is. Alphabetical ordering doesn't suffer from this nearly as much.
Plus: alphabetical ordering lets you browse. I don't know about you, but I don't want to figure out what book I want to read next by looking at a database. I want to do it by looking at the shelves, and taking them down, flipping through, looking at the cover, putting them back, etc. That's what books are all about. This is your home, not a warehouse...
The only advantage I can think of is for insurance purposes. You can backup the file offsite, and keep a list of your library to be replaced in case of fire or flood. A simpler way would be to take high re pictures of your bookshelves, which is what I did with my CD collection.
Really the best way is by author and then google the title or author when doing a search on a subject in a book he thinks he might have on his shelves. Then just find it by the author.
Oh You POS
There are a lot of replies about what software to use to track the books on a PC. That's cool and all, but it is very little help when you have to find a book on the shelves. I happen to own about 1700 books - roughly half the number you have. I think people underestimate the magnitude of the task - assume roughly 1m shelves, 3500 books of 2cm each require 70 shelves - that's over a dozen packed bookcases!
:-), my books immediately stick out amongst the pile of books in their own sizable library.
To keep things sane, I added a colored sticker (yellow in my case) to the spine of each book, marked with the first letters of the author's first and last name. Actually I cheat a bit, there are a very small number of categories I use - cookbooks, references - where I put a category icon instead. I put the books on the shelves ordered by the marker. This is loose enough that I don't have to think too much when returning a book to the library, but tight enough I can easily find anything I want. Another side benefit is that when I visit old friends (or mothers
LibraryThing costs money if you are cataloguing a collection of any meaningful size. There are better options, such as Alexandria under *nix, that do the same gratis.
Not sure how this will go over if your library is already in the thousands, but there's one tip I want to share with people who are just getting their libraries started and don't buy more than a few dozen books a year:
Dispense with this tedious alphabetizing stuff, which will force you to open up space between existing books whenever you muy something new. Just set up some broad categories -- say, one bookcase or shelf per category -- and then add your books to the end of the shelf, as you acquire them. They will then be arranged in what is *for you* chronological order.
When you're done with a book, either return it to its original position, or put it at the front of the shelf. (But stick with one or the other of these systems.)
You're arranging the books so that *you* can find them again after already having read them at least once, right? I can often remember *when* I read a book, but not who wrote it. I also have many books which don't have an identifiable "author" (they were written by several people, or are collections of old photocopies custom-made). If you have books in multiple languages, you have to start worrying about how you "alphabetize" other alphabets.
Dump all that and go chronological!
I'm a librarian, and believe me you're making this harder than it needs to be. Barcode scanning is great... if you want to check material in and out. LOC/Dewey organization is great... if you can spend several minutes per book assigning catalog info and creating your own cutters. You're dealing with a home collection; your main concerns are shelf space and a functional order. This may sound radical, but forget subject headings; it's unnecessary for something this size. Just get them in alphabetical order, either by title or author last name. At most, you can separate them into 2 or three different size categories for easy shelving --oversize, "regular", and etc (unusually thin or loose pamphlet-type material, books w/ CD-R cases or other packages.) For my home collection, size is the primary sorting category -- it's easier to move around when your stacks are pyramid-shaped. It's amazing how technology can be not only sophisticated, effective, and simple... but that sometimes it doesn't even need electricity. Go figure.
I build my shelves 8 inches deep (Yes, build. All the shelves you buy these days are extra deep... Otherwise known as extra-space wasting) so that hard cover and reference books just reach the front of the shelves, and all the shelves are adjustable. If you space your holes right, you can have shelves that are perfect for either the typical hardcover, or the typical paperback. If you want to combine both on a shelf, what we typically do is stand up the ones that are shelf height and lie the others on their side. If most of the books are tall, the short ones are on their side, and the other way around... Truely large books are uncommon (let's face it. most geeks have a collection of fiction in paperback, trade paperback/comic book, and hardback sizes, and the O'Reilly sized books, but not much else.), and go elsewhere, like on top of the shelves.
If you use #2 pine, and you don't mind using the wall as a structural component (side-to-side stabalizing only, so you don't need the back) you can build attractive, if not plain looking set of shelves in about an hour if you take the time to build a shelf hole jig. As a bonus they only cost around $20.
I manage my books and CD's with Readerware and a portable scanner with a USB interface. Very cool.
Doug Jensen
It is a political troll that is based on nothing more than hate-filled partisan fantasy.
/.
This is
What do you expect? Political discourse at a level greater than (and I quote) "Neener neener neener"?
Besides, this isn't a partisan thing. Both major parties are equally bad about it, it's just that the one in power gets all the attention. The problem is that it seems 95% of people seem to be able to believe one party could be sinister and evil, but their party of choice is completely blameless and altruistic. The fact of the matter is that there is a "culture of corruption", and the party that's guilty of creating and perpetuating it is the U.S. Government. Will Rogers and Mark Twain were right.
Still, to play on a paraphrase of Disraeli (or somebody famous and smarter than me): The U.S. is the worst country to live in the entire world, except for all the others.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.