The Home Library Problem Solved

Zack Grossbart writes "About 18 months ago I posted the following question to Ask Slashdot: 'How do you organize a home library with 3,500 books?' I have read all the responses, reviewed most of the available software, and come up with a good solution described in the article The Library Problem. This article discusses various cataloging schemes, reviews cheap barcode scanners, and outlines a complete solution for organizing your home library. Now you can see an Ask Slashdot question with a definitive answer."

Comments

Why do you _need_ 3500 books?

[melted]

Why not donate, say, 3400 of them that you will never read again to a local public library? I have quite a few books myself and I'm contemplating doing exactly this (except for about 50 books that are rare, super-expensive or used often).

IP business model

[NeutronCowboy]

This is going to be off-topic, but this is important enough to repeat ad nauseam.

The OP is right. You know why? Because ultimately, the RIAA, MPAA, recording studios, publishers and other middle-men don't care one iota about what is legal and what is illegal. All they care about is to extract as much money as possible from you. That's it. There's nothing else. I can guarantee you that if anyone figured out a way to know exactly how many people are watching or listening to a copyrighted product, they'd charge you for it. And if they couldn't charge you for it, they'd try to change the laws so that you'll be forced to pay them.

If the NY Times could figure out a system by which they'd know who is reading which copy of their newspaper, who is peeking over shoulders to read it and who hands it to someone else, they'd use that system to charge everyone who takes a look at their property. The only thing that's stopping them is that this is currently not feasible. The MPAA and RIAA are just lucky that their product migrated to digital format much sooner, and are therefore at the forefront of the copyright movement.

Don't kid yourself - whether or not any of this stuff is illegal or not has absolutely no bearing on whether companies will try to make it illegal not to pay for it. That's why these discussions are important: we need to figure out what is necessary to preserve a thriving culture, and what can be fenced off to provide income to those who produce it. Because if we don't, we'll end up paying for everything everytime we get in contact with it.