Slashdot Mirror
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."
No posts, and already slashdotted!
Kevin Smith on Prince
You burn them, or at least the ones which you're unlikely to read again.
Or if that offends you, set them free...
Deleted
Meh, I just married a librarian instead.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
We have approx 3000 books in the house as well as two kids. Dewey-ish classification works fine for us, splitting the books into groups according to their Dewey hundreds (0-99.999, 100-1999.999,...). However we have had to break out some special sections. Robots, programming and electronics have a special area together (breaking Dewey boundaries). All the fishing related stuff goes together (including studies of aquatic instects etc). All the craft books go together (well Dewey does that anyway).
No computer needed.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have boxes of books in the basement, shelves of books upstairs, stacks of books in th edining room, CDs, DVDs, tapes, records, all over the place.
I solved the problem by ignoring it.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The same company which currently sell the hand bar code scanner that was mentioned in the article, Microvision, appear to have software just for cataloging books, CDs, DVDs, and anything scannable with a bar code. It didn't state that it could do book organizing in LOC or Dewey Decimal system, but if someone is wanting to do a similar project, to inventory media, it may be something that people could look into.
If the RIAA has their way, making available copyrighted works to people other than the purchaser will be considered copyright infringement. You don't want to get sued by the books publishers, do you?
Then don't create a library. It's that simple.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I remember reading your original post and found it intriguing, great to see some feedback after it's all said and done. Anyways, I would love to see some pictures! I skimmed through your write up and found many of it interesting (I'll read it completely tonight) but I would love to see some images of your completed work. Maybe I missed a link or something though.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Now you can see an Ask Slashdot question with a definitive answer
... blah blah (bunch of legalese) blah... and that's what you are legally entitled to do.
That takes all the fun out of it, especially for legal questions.
Example:
Q: Someone is taking credit for my code. What legal recourse do I have?
A1: IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you can kill him for that and call it self defense. It totally won't be murder.
A2: IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you can take his eye for it. Eye for a piece of code or something like that...
A3: IANAL, but I'm pretty sure you're entitled to their wife and the profits from selling his children into slavery.
A4: I AM a lawyer, and depending on how you licensed your code
The experience of an ask slashdot is going down the list of answers, plugging and checking. Surviving long enough to use the one by the actual lawyer is so rewarding. I tell you, I want stand for any sort definitive answer to an ask slashdot.
I got a catholic block.
...you didn't answer any questions about this "wife" artifact you're dealing with while catalogging books. Could you please give us more details?
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
...of my ex-daughter-in-law, who decided to surprise me for my birthday by reorganizing my (3500) books:
By height.
rj
My solution was "marry a librarian". Worked very well for me, you might consider trying it.
The big advantages of reading e-books:
I read "the god delusion" a while back which was (at least at the time) not available in e-book format, so I had to buy the dead tree edition. I was really surprised, after not having read a dead tree book for a long time, how annoyed I was by the limitations of paper books.
That's what I do. And her BS is in Computer Science, so win-win. Except for all the emacs versus vim arguments. Gah! So many years of schooling, and she can't understand that vim is superior?
Except he excluded DDS explicitly, because it was difficult to subcategorize-and-sort below the general ABC.XYZ Dewey number.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Do you mean "ex-daughter-in-law" or should that say "late daughter-in-law"?
I was facing a similar, but somewhat smaller problem (~1600 books) and worked out a solution using delicious monster. First off I segregated my hardcovers and paperbacks info fiction and non-fiction sections, then scanned them all into Delicious Library, a great mac app. It uses a video camera (I used a camcorder with firewire, but you can use a webcam) to scan the barcode, then gets the info on the book from amazon. Obviously the scanning is the most tedious bit, but since I had to remove everything from the shelves at some point anyway to sort everything it wasn't so ugly. After that was done I figured out how many books fit on a shelf (with some fudge factor) and made a label for each shelf showing what range of authors or subjects should go on that shelf. I did wind up with piles of books on my floor while I removed and reshelved everything but I had to do only a couple of shelf cascades where everything had to be moved down. After the shelves had the right books on them it was fairly easy to alphabetize on each shelf without a ton of book juggling.
They did consider the DDC, but opted better for the LLC. RTFA.
Burn them to a DVD.
Next.
Seriously I haven't read a paper book cover to cover since I was 17 or so (10 years ago). Have read many multi-hundred page PDFs though.
Seriously, what the hell?
Doesn't everyone here have a hobby or two they spend a fair bit of money on? Perhaps it's your computer gear, maybe it's model airplanes, maybe it's your car or your audio system. Last I checked, an awful lot of geeks had a particular hobby they enjoyed and spent money on, and they don't have to be 'rich bastards' to do so. They just have to value enjoying themselves over... What? Hording money? So this man's hobby is reading and his library, and he enjoys organizing it in a creative way.
Sheesh.
I'd try reading their article(wasn't slashdotted for me); they specifically address that they considered the Dewey Decimal System and point out the problems they had with it.
Of course, I have enough books to practically count as another 4" of insulation around my house...
I don't read AC A human right
sell your books and buy a Kindle.
Hi, it was an overall interesting reading with some entertaining bits. I realized that you settled for a closed source sollution for this one. I am sure there must be some Open Source software which you could use to solve your problem (one of the many along Open Bibliographic and cataloging list.
In your article you state that you thought about developing your own application. I think that a better approach would be to look for the Open Source applications that satisfy you AND after choosing one, add the tools that you need.
Of course, if you do have the money and the product satisfies your needs, go ahead!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
They considered that, and discarded it.
And the problem was more than just choosing a classification system. There were also the technical challenges of actually implementing it, unless you mean to imply that someone would Ask Slashdot and then use 3x5 index cards.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Someone tagged this rich bastard, but I don't think that's extreme at all. I've kept nearly every book I've ever bought in my life, and I probably have around 800. And I'm only 21 years old (thankfully my parents have an empty garage and I was reading from age 2). Depending on the submitter's age and if he/she is married to another book lover it would be very easy to get to that number.
This is slashdot, right? As in news for nerds. Do nerds no longer enjoy reading?
We are only around 500-600 books right now, so admittedly it's a smaller issue than 3500, but Delicious Library software combined with what the submitter calls "soft alphabetizing" has worked well for us. We split fiction from non-fiction, then split non-fiction into sub categories. My wife and I each have a handful of categories that we are very interested in, so a dozen sub-categories combined with a general non-fiction catch-all makes most books easy to find. In fact, the only reason we use the software catalog is so we can loan out books to friends and family. What's the point of keeping hundreds or thousands of books, if they go unused? People are always borrowing books (and movies) and we don't have to worry about losing them. Or at least we know whose thumbs to break if the books don't come back.
That is a metric assload of books.
Do a lot of you guys have that many books? I own less than 100 books and feel it already is a burden for the amount of size and space they take up. I am trying to switch to ebooks for the most part - but some books I just feel I want a physical copy.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
You forget, the Dewey Decimal System is patented. Every library that uses it is required to pay over $100 a year for the privilege. I suggest Library of Congress if you are looking for something unencumbered. It is also easier to sub categorize.
I find the secret is to lay them spine-down in the attic. Helps immeasurably with heating and cooling costs.
...Bah, your looking at this the wrong way. I say orginize your own books and data a girl who works at Lululemon (a self-described as a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company). Thats what I do. And while we don't have emacs vs vim arguments, we make much better use of our time.
I use goodreads.com - it is free and has a highly intuitive interface. In order to add a book, all you need to do is enter the title of the book or the authors last name or isbn, or import your recent buys directly from Amazon.com. You can even export your booklist to an excel document. The tagging feature is a nice alternative to a formal card catalog system for a home library. So, for example, for Isaac Asimov's Foundation, my tags are read, scifi, livingroomshelfA - you could throw in a dewey decimal number as a tag easily as well, but why bother for a small library?
" I find the secret is to lay them spine-down in the attic. Helps immeasurably with heating and cooling costs."
Kevin Smith on Prince
You could do it the real programmer's lazy way: make a flat file "database" and use regex to query that database.
and offer them any book in your stacks that they'd like. Then call a local high school and a local college, and do the same.
You can only read one book in any instant, and only a few "at a time". Why not share the others with people who'd get value from them, especially if the library will allow you to borrow them "back" later? We like the idea of rewarding authors of good works, but really -- given the insane amount of overconsumption the Western World engages in, reducing consumption by reusing items, including books, makes more and more sense.
Books aren't trophies.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
As a professional librarian some of the analysis of the classification systems was not correct. First of all when you catalog a material you need to classify the material (classification schemes include LC, Dewey, etc) and select subject headings (the two most popular ones are Sears and LC subject headings). Even though classification and subject headings both have LC categories these are two separate systems and each has there own books and rules. The Dewey Decimal System number is printed in most books on the back of the title page. It is usually listed under the initials CIP which means cataloging in print. The number will look something like this 000.00 '00 '00 '0000. For home use you only need to use the numbers up to the first the ' . The full dewey number is meant to be used for very large libraries collections of a half million or more. For those books that don't have Dewey numbers you can easily assign Dewey numbers by using the first volume of the Dewey classification series, which is usually available at you local public library. The subject headings are also available in CIP usually with the words/letters Sears: or LC: . The author did not explain how he was attaching the call number to the book. You could do this easily by putting an index card in the book with the proper call number. As for software there is now a readily available open source program called Koha. This program has a built in Z39.50 search engine which allows you to scan in the ISBN number and search libraries that have similar books. You can then select the Machine Readable Record (MARC) which contains the call number subject headings and the bibliographic information. Since Koha is open source it is free, and quite versatile. Many small church and school libraries use Koha, along with the library I work for.
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).
To his credit, he did say that he donated or gave away 500 of the books in the process of cataloging them. Also some of these books may be reference (as an example, he was looking for books on GUI design). He did say that 80% of the books have been read however.
Personally, I can't imagine having that many books myself. I generally don't have more than 10-15 non-reference books on hand at a time. I usually pass them on to someone else. Of course, I don't read dead tree publications very much to begin with. eBooks are fine for me, unless I'm traveling or something. And even then I'm not much of a book reader.
Collecting books is not my thing, but to each his own.
#!/
Amateur. I passed 3,500 a LONG time ago. Currently, my library consists of just over 5,000 books, mostly first editions and things. I literally had to add on an extra 1,000 sq ft on to my house because I ran out of furniture to throw out to make room for my books. I don't do the whole barcode thing, mainly because I don't loan my books out, but I do use Tellico for my book database and it works great for the books with ISBN numbers. Since a good portion of my volumes are pre-1960s (I think that's when they started using ISBN) I had to manually enter a lot of mine in. It took a while, but I don't have any issues with it after getting them in there.
It's great to hear someone else has the problem as I.
Pax Vobiscum
It's nice to see someone actually follow up on an Ask Slashdot question and share the end result.
"Real" libraries also end up throwing out books, selling them in bulk to be ground up as pig feed, or seeling them for 25 cents each, when they run out of room. Cheaper to throw some of the old, unused stuff out than it is to build an extension.
Kevin Smith on Prince
it's an open source library tracking system. due to a recent review where someone had a library of 3k+ books and had problems with alexandria, people on the dev list have been actively addressing some of the reviewer's concerns. of course, they are still looking for help (like any open source project), but it's been an ongoing gnome project for a while. details here.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Indexing your books doesn't cost much of anything - you just need to be geeky enough to take the time. I suppose the process of going through all your books gives you an excuse to decide that some of them aren't keepers and take them to the used-book store.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Really. I would have thought the patent on the DDS would have long since expired.
There's more to cataloging books than just finding them. We've probably got only a couple thousand, but my wife catalogs them using LibraryThing and also stores them in a local file. To my knowledge, we've never used either to find a book in our house, but these things give us:
I agree that you don't need a computer to find a book in a collection of less than 10,000 books. If you can't organize those physically well enough to find them without a computer, a computer is just going to make it harder. Sorting by fiction/non-fiction and then by author is sufficient for us (with a special computer books section) to find anything pretty quickly. But it's pretty difficult to remember if you already have book sixty-two in the "Accordion of Fate" series or whether you have the third or fourth edition of O'Reilly's "Programming $ELITIST_LANGUAGE_OF_THE_MONTH" when you're out and about. And if you lose your whole collection, the chances of remembering the whole thing are virtually nil unless you have perfect photographic memory, in which case, why do you need to keep books around in the first place? :-)
And the flamebait mod for the parent post was unfair and I hope it's M2ed as such.
Regardless of what you see in colleges, copying copyrighted books and distributing the copies IS illegal.
By making apparel?
I understand there's a guy in an alternative imaginary universe who is pretty good at categorising unusual book collections, but I don't have his phone number. If you know how to get in touch with Mr. Oook, please could you let me know? And, while you're about it, could you let me know where I am too?
And no, I would never dream of suggesting that someone who has the urge to catalog a home library is in the slightest obsessive.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
And program in Commodore Basic a database program that writes records to cassette tape, and index all your books. I would leave your C-64 on all the time so you don't have to reload your index files from tape. I you want more spped, upgrade to a 1571 disk drive, or a Lt. Kernel Hard Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lt_Kernal)
You can scan in images of your book covers with a scanning device you make at home (search google.com yourself for plans.)
Let me ask a straighforward question to the submitter: Are these ~3500 books actually books you would read again? Or are you simply collecting books for the sake of collecting them (without ever having the intention of re-reading)?
I solve the problem of organizing my books very easily: Those books that I have read once and will probably never read again I put back into circulation (I either donate them or sell them to Half-Price Books, depending upon my frame of mind at the moment). I cull old IT/technology books and recycle them, as they really are no longer worth the paper they're printed on. The remaining few hundred "static" books I own (mostly references) fit just fine in a couple of oak bookshelves, organized first by subject, then alphabetically.
Problem solved. YMMV.
It is such a pain in the ass to type all that crap in. I bet it would be possible to take pictures and automatically OCR the titles.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Why pay $12-$20/book when I can get it used for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99 (Goodwill, divide by 2 on half-price-day), $0.25 or $0.10 (Disabled American Veterans Thrift Store)?
I bought a couple new books back in the day, for titles that I didn't want to wait for. But now I'd rather be surprised at what I find.
There was one book that had been recommended to me some 2.5 years ago. I almost checked it out of the library this fall, then a couple days later I found a copy at Goodwill for $1.99.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
So he can keep them and refer to them obviously.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I have only a couple hundred books, but LibraryThing has been awesome to help avoid buying the same book twice. I use it along with a modified cuecat barcode scanner and had my whole collection done in about 20 minutes. It doesn't hurt that the site is probably one of the most well set up and powerful examples of "web 2.0" (shudder) that I've ever used.
Pull my dongle!
3500+ books? I bet your friends love helping you move :)
I have MAYBE 40 books, max, and I debate on throwing them away everytime I move just because they're a pain in the ass to deal with.
In an effort to conform with internet communication standards, please note that the above comment is 100% biased opinion
This should be a homework problem in an early chapter of a good database book.
A few years ago I wrote up a little text-mode Java program in an hour or two that reads the barcode from a cuecat, and looks up the book using amazon web services. If there's no barcode or ISBN you can punch it in the title, etc. by hand. Then you punch in the condition of the book and where it's located, just a few keystrokes. If you just hit return it defaults to the previous answer to the question. All the data just gets stuffed into a SQL table. It's a very ugly little program, but it works great. I cataloged about 30 U-Haul boxes full of books in a few hours. To view or modify the data, just bring up the table in webmin or whatever query browser you prefer.
Stuff like this is trivial in SQL, and most of the tools are already written. Why work harder than you have to?
First, I'd like to point out the post immediately following this is on the missing matter in the universe. Coincidence? Read the book.
Secondly, I would propose there are likely no great solutions to the problem. There are decent ones, but the difficulty you'll run into is that there will always be multiple satisfactory organization schemes that work. Which means if you really need things to be complete, you'll need duplicates of all your books.
I had a similar issue when I was in grad school, and was trying to figure out how to organize all the papers I read. The standard is to organize the papers by last author (i.e. whoever's lab the work was done in). However, this causes issues when someone starts their own lab. Sometimes name-order changes, and sometimes two labs will collaborate.
My final solution was to give up on trying to impose a physical organization, but rather keep an electronic database of everything. I then could keep folders of no more than N papers, each one added in chronological order it was added. The database would hold which folder the paper is placed in, and its index in the folder (i.e. the kth paper).
Finding any paper by hand is pretty futile, but within 5 seconds using the computer I can locate any paper I wish. Likewise, a similar strategy could be used for a bookshelf. You just need some method to demarcate ever Nth book.
For the database you can use the standard MySQL server (I unfortunately used XML, to which day I still regret). If you're into web pages, it's a pretty simple task to use something like RoR to make a quick interface for entering book information.
However, this is a bit unsatisfactory if you want to use a bar-code scanner. Personally, since I mostly use Macs these days, is I would write something quick using PyObjC. Programs such as Delicious Monster use the web cam to read in bar codes, but writing your own might be some work (not impossible, though), so buying a bar-code scanner is probably better option (whatever happened to the CueCats?)
I'm pretty sure I failed to properly answer the question, because this all requires a bunch of coding. However, it's a pretty decent project for any intermediate programmer. The XML solution is nice, as you can enter in the entries by hand, no complex interface required, but you also get no automation, and reading in large XML files can be slow at times.
Damn, this one deserve recognition, just for mentioning a Cuecat. Anyone else remember that whole thing and the noise here on Slashdot? Heh. Shame on all you IP-hating Cuecat abusers!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Wow, you did a great job problem solving this problem so quickly! While we're on solving problems of a practical, day-to-day nature, perhaps you can help me out. See, I just started this job as a traveling salesman and I was wondering, given a number of cities and the costs of traveling from any city to any other city, what is the least-cost round-trip route that visits each city exactly once and then returns to the starting city? Any ideas?
I mean, this is the 3rd post with "I'm dating/married/engaged to a librarian" - normally, entire days go by without any evidence that /. readers know what sex with another person is, much less experience it.
Gotta be the eyeglasses. Geeks and girls with eyeglasses...
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
3500 books = roughly 100 books per year.
...but after keeping every book obtained over four decades, including every textbook from two degrees, voracious abuse of dirt-cheap ($0.25/book, fill-a-bag-for-$4, etc.) book sales, and received many free/inherited/gifts, they add up.
My home is probably pushing 2000 books now, which I consider - a good start.
No I'm not rich.
My first reaction to the lead question was: organize them? haven't you read them all and know which is where?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
You will never have more books than a real library, so why try?
Well, now THAT's a defeatest attitude!
I've found that while I don't have as many books as a real library, I do have more individual sci-fi/fantasy titles than many major libraries. What with no repeats, and genre specialization, you can actually compete. Keep the dream alive!
Funny, I didn't realize that saving the books you enjoy, possibly over the course of, say, 25 years, was hoarding.
You also assume that someone with that many books doesn't read them... perhaps you've never been a researching type of person, or one that simply enjoys reading over sitting mindless while staring at pretty pictures on a tube?
Better yet, you think Web 2.0 and the "blogosphere" contains all the information you'll ever need, better than any grand master may be able to present?
Burn thyself, troll. Of the several hundred books I've carted with me through times good and bad (including one stretch homeless; they were thankfully recovered from questionable storage) I have read them. Every. Single. One. More. Than. Three. Times. Minimum. Newer books, as I add, take a month or two to get there, but then I generally will re-read the entire series of books whenever a new one comes out. And then there's the research aspect, of having at hand the reference you need to complete your own writing.
Or is that wasteful, and hoarding, as well? Let me see... libraries are open, with a good funding program, from 0800-2130, between 3-6 days a week, depending on locality. Bookstores can be funny about letting you sit down, and just read; worse yet, try copying from a book into a notebook. In this enlightened time of IP rights, I'm sure that's no problem at all. And sadly, not all books are digitized and accessible from the Great Tubes of the Interweb. Meanwhile, when it's 4 minutes past 3am, and I *MUST* have the citation data for my reference in a paper that will be presented at 8am, I can look over my shoulder and SEE where my information is; without all that problem you get sometimes from librarians, governments, and other interest groups that think a book should be edited to match the present sensibilities.
And I hate to tell you, but it's not that easy, these days, to own more volumes than your local library, if you're talking specifics. At the college I attended to begin my undergraduate degree, the Science Fiction club had MORE FICTION VOLUMES than the college library. Perhaps, rather than give my books to people who may just shrug and discard it with the note "already have 4 copies", I could donate money or time to the library? Hmmmmmm....
Now that MIGHT de-trollify your post.
In March of 2006 my wife Mary and I owned about 3,500 books. We both have eclectic interests, voracious appetites for knowledge, and a great love of used bookstores. The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were. We lost books all the time, cursed late into the night digging through piles for that one book we knew must be there, and even bought books only to find that we already owned them. There were books on random shelves, books on the floor, we were tripping over books when we walked up and down the stairs. In short, we had a mess.
...and yes we are both engineers.
We needed to get organized. We needed a way to store all of our books so they were easily accessible. We also needed to integrate the two separate book collections which represented one of the remaining holdouts of our single lives. We got together and came up with a list of requirements for our new system.
To complete this project we needed a system to organize all of the books, a way to quickly add books to that system, and a place to store all of the books.
A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place
Our first task was to decide what system we should use for ordering the books. Most of the systems used to organize books are based on combinations of the author's name, the title of the book, and the category of the subject matter. Some of the systems provide a general outline for where a book should be and other systems are very specific. We considered three different systems: alphabetical, Dewey Decimal, and Library of Congress.
Alphabetizing
Probably the most common system used for organizing home libraries is alphabetizing. Books are arranged in alphabetical order by title or author's name. This makes books reasonably easy to find, but puts Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie next to Runner's World Guide to Injury Prevention by Dagny Scott Barrios. This organization makes it difficult to browse books.
Adding categorization to alphabetical sorting can fix that problem. This system organizes books into categories and then alphabetically within those categories. In this system the book Three Seductive Ideas by Jerome Kagan might end up next to The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker because they are both about psychology. This system makes browsing by subject possible, but it requires you to create categories for each book. Should The State, War, and the State of War by Kalevi J. Holsti be categorized as international relations, warfare, or politics? Creating categories which will work well with a set of unknown books is very difficult. We needed a system with established categories.
Dewey Decimal
Dewey Decimal is familiar to just about everyone who came through the American educational system. There is a good chance the library from your grade school used Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC for short). DDC assigns each book a number based on its subject matter. DDC organized all categories into three levels. The system has 10 main classes, 100 divisions and 1000 sections. The book Larousse Gastronomique edited by Prosper Montagne may have a DDC number of 641.3/003 21 - 600 the main class for technology, 641 is the division for food and drink, and 3/003 21 indicates the specific subsection specified in that library.
However, DDC has one big problem. The assigned numbers are not fixed. There is no central authority assigning DDC numbers to books and the same book can have a different number in two different libraries. We didn't want to spend time working out the right catalog number for each of our books; we just wanted
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
. . . I read your damn book!
3,500 books? That takes up a lot of space. Why not just get a Kindle? [ducks barrage of lexical projectiles]
And let's not forget snob appeal. No one is going to notice me reading Proust on a PDA. Well, no one is going to notice the book, either, and if they did they wouldn't know who he is or how damned smart I must be for reading him (cough cough) but dammit I can hope. Do you want to take that hope away from me?
I've read a few books on a Tungsten (whichever one had the keyboard) and it was cool, but I migrated back to analog via Moleskine notebooks, Lamy fountain pens, and dead-tree books. I miss copy/paste and a search function, but that's it.
Went the readerware system as well, but instead of Cue cats (I even had some laying around) I went to e-bay and got the barcode reader for my Handspring (cost 20$). I had to also pick up Handybase software ($29.99 but had to go to older version 2.75 - DDH software was very cooperative about this).
We are not trying to sort the books, but I have 2,842 books cataloged at this moment. And about 50-75 books were weeded out as duplicates. 7 or 8 shelves left to go, I'm closing in on the end of it. I'll easily pass the 3000 mark.
Duplicate books were contributed to a local Scout troop to sell as part of a garage sale. Except for the latest pile which hasn't gotten to them yet.
The article is also wrong on one point. Hardcover books may have the barcode on the back cover, but modern paperbacks have them on the inside front cover. The barcode on the back cover is garbage.
The other good thing about readerware is that the report can be pushed back down to the Palm for taking with me to the bookstore....
And it has pieces you can get for DVDs and CDs, so when I finish th ebooks, then I move on.
I used LCC for my modest library of 500 books. Looked the books up at the Library of Congress then copied and pasted the LCC information into an StarOffice8 spreadsheet. Also looked up on Amazon to get the price. Sorted by LCC and printed out.
LCC Search Website
http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First
Now for oddities. Edward R. Tufte's books were one. I would appreciate any illumination on this.
"Visual Explanations" CALL NUMBER P93.5.T84 1990 Subject area: Visual Communication (from full record tab)
"Envisioning Information" CALL NUMBER P93.5.T846 1997 Subject area: Visual Communication (from full record tab)
"The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" CALL NUMBER QA276.3.T83 1983 Statistics Graphic Records (from full record tab)
Seems odd to me that one of Tufte's is way over in Statistics Graphics.
Foreign Language
LCC is happy to catalog some more modern mainstrame foreign language books. For example: "Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia"
http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v3=1&ti=1,1&SEQ=20071211155612&Search_Arg=Biblia%20Hebraica%20Stuttgartensia&Search_Code=TALL&CNT=25&PID=11419&SID=1
Thanks for all the comments,
Jim
If you are running Mac OS X, you can use Booxter which is the best book cataloging program out there. It tracks all sorts of attributes and connects to a lot of different web sites to get the book data (Amazon, but also Library of Congress, etc.). In addition to books, it will also catalog music, movies and comic books.
You can create smart lists (like in iTunes) to categorize things, and you can scan barcodes with a handheld scanner or use an iSight. It also has integrated label printing to help you in organizing a home library, and can easily handle many thousands of items.
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).
As long as we're making value judgments for strangers, here's my suggestion for you: why don't you sell those last 50 books of yours and give the money to the homeless? If they're valuable, they're worth a lot! If they're rare, then those are the ones that it's most important that you not hoard, right? </smart-assery>
No one has the right to tell someone else what to do with their possessions. And who are you to say he'll never read them? Even so, a book's value isn't only in being read cover-to-cover. Maybe he refers to them every so often. Maybe he wants to keep them for his kids. Maybe he parades his friends through the house and they all borrow books all the time. He's going through great effort to catalog them. That implies that they see some use. If they just sat on the shelves, untouched, he could type up a list as a text file--hell, with a typewriter--and be done with it.
Besides, on a practical note, I don't think there's a terrible shortage of books in the world. I visit my local library often and the shelves are literally 99.9% full at any given moment. If you look at his profile, he's in freaking Cambridge, Mass. I think they're pretty well set for books in that town. And before the "send them to Podunk, IA!" responses come in: go back to my original argument--it's not up to you to decide what someone else should do with their stuff.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The basic problem Zack has is lack of discipline. (I.E. not bothering to create a simple shelving and organizing system [1], not shelving books where they belong [2], and not shelving books when not in use[3].)
$440 dollars later - and precisely none of those problems have been solved. A high tech catalog system is worthless if you don't put the books back where they belong when not in use.
[1] "There were books on random shelves, books on the floor, we were tripping over books when we walked up and down the stairs."
[2] "The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were"
[3] "We lost books all the time, cursed late into the night digging through piles for that one book we knew must be there"
PS: from TFA:
Total books - About 3,500
Sold, given away, or recycled - About 500
Cataloged - 1,634
Exempted - about 200
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
So many posts advocating marriage to a Librarian. So many posts asking what a wife is. And all of them have been modded +5 funny.
I have bookshelves filled with paper books, but recently most of my books have been of the 'e' variety, from various sources. Looking to the future, I think I'll miss the bookshelves more than the paper books themselves. At least two functions of bookshelves will likely be lost to us: (1) they look good, and (2) they give us a way of showing others how smart we are and what we're interested in.
Of course, we can all post our ebook lists on the Web, but that won't help with our empty wallspace or impress people who physically visit our homes. So, I propose we use big wall-mounted LCD screens - getting cheaper all the time - to display a visual bookshelf-like representation of the books on our hard drives. After all, if you read an e-book and nobody ever sees it, have you really read it?
Please tell me you and your wife do not have children, or children living at home. With two kids of my own, I find it hard to find time to take a dump let alone organize a collection of 3500 books.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
"I married a librarian to take care of my books...
AND a mechanic to take care of my car...
AND a plumber to take care of the bath...
AND a chef to take care of meals...
AND a police officer to take care of security...
AND and politician AND a judge to keep me out of jail!"
I remember the original Ask Slashdot as well, and it was an amusing thread, in parts. I'm glad you came back to update us, not many people do. It's nice to see the thought process at work.
I don't have enough books to worry about something like this (I have too good a memory, once I finish a book it's boring to read it again), but my beta version wife (aka girlfriend) is an avid collector... so I might score some points for passing on this idea.
Thanks, Ask Slashdot, for helping me get laid via a librarian question.
God this place is odd...
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
1873 invention. The patent has long since expired, but "Dewey Decimal System" is an active trademark, registered in 1963. source
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
> 'How do you organize a home library with 3,500 books?'
Put the ones with thicker dust way at the top or way down at the bottom. Keep that issue of Vogue with that picture of Katherine Heigl you can't do without on the bedstand. That's about it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
My wife uses Librarything. She found the barcode scanner that automatically searches for the title after you scan it, then finds all the data for you to reduce the typing immensely. You might try it before dissing it :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Uhm, well, yes. Is there anything wrong with it? You don't say, that there is, but I feel, you imply it...
True, but, again, there is nothing obviously wrong with the situation... In fact, I think, this would be a considerable improvement. If the content-creator (or whoever they sell their creations to) is paid every time the creation is read/watched/listened, the system would be much better at rewarding good creations and punishing the bad ones. It is doing so already, but the technological/legal advances you are forecasting promise to make it much less crude.
In books it is especially unfair, because the author's reward is determined only by the amount of first sales. This means, a book that stays in a family for generations and one, that's thrown out after the first read, reward their authors equally and cost their readers the same... At least, with videos the authors/makers get something every time a movie is rented.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Organization is for wimps.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
1. Bar Code
2. Wi-Fi*
3. RFID*
(*unless you are worried about neighbors or sniffers scooping up your collection titles...).
Now, you can use a relational database, sort them, and then displace or misplace them about the premises all you like. Just call them up. If you have multiple book cases and lots of non-thief guests, help them be helpful by putting wall scanners around the house. They can press the book against one or under one (like in "Targey") and be told in audio or in display where approximately to deposit or set the book.
This would work for not only books, but tools, DVDs, CDs, dishes, clothes, whatever anyone wishes to anal-retentively catalog, sort, and locate (place or find)...
Best thing? You don't NEED a fixed placement; shelving can be dynamic. This is something public libraries (ESPECIALLY SF Main) could use. It's frustrating to not be able to re-check for 5-15 DAYS a book or video I KNOW that I returned and is not on hold for another patron. I asked about that and aside from technical issues was the explanation that the delay helps deter repeat checkouts and enables others to find and check out or just at-desk read or browse a work.
But, still, to be fair to SF Main, they are updating the branch with a more automated check-in/check-out system. Hopefully they've dispensed with the tagging of reserved books with patron name. NObody should have to wonder what nosybodies are scanning the reservation shelves by patron and topic.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Perhaps because, like me, the original poster may be able to state with high confidence that they won't read most of their books ever again, but cannot state with high confidence that they won't read any particular book ever again.
Merely a suggestion.
You can't realistically expect someone to read each of the 3500 books more than once. Therefore, most of them will just sit there collecting dust and taking up space. I don't see how this is preferable to donating them to a library, I'm sorry.
The value in donating them is this:
1. You free up space (space is _expensive_ these days)
2. You get a tax write off
3. You don't have to maintain them (dust them off, repair shelves, keep inventory)
4. Someone else will get some mileage out of your books
And best of all,
5. If you need one of your books, you can loan it from the library anytime
I've got about 2000 books. I put them on www.librarything.com in a couple of days using a cuecat reader or just manually. The data is not always the best--you don't get full MARC records, but as Adam Osborne used to say (before he went bankrupt) "adequacy is sufficient." I even get cover art out of the deal. The records are exportable in cdf so I'm not wedded to the system. Quick and dirty does it.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
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).
And as a public librarian, I strongly suggest that you ASK your librarian before you do this. If you show up at my library with that number of books, I will probably attempt to make you eat them.
Here's a previous Slashdot comment I made regarding how different public libraries handle donations differently and how they may be either a boon or a burden, depending on the library.
Finally, if he enjoys having 3500 books and his family and friends use them, why shouldn't he have them?
Someone actually follows through on an Ask Slashdot, gives us information on how he solved his problem, and at least 3/4 of the replies to this article are either telling him to sell all his books and that he is a greedy asshole or that paper books are dead (HAHAHAHAHA) and to get an ebook reader.
/. is all about.
Can't any of you understand that some people like to collect certain things that may not have a lot of value to others? It's hilarious that people will absolutely gush over articles about someone's (functionally useless) vintage computer/console/anything tech collection, but when someone collects books, which can have large monetary, functional, historical and sentimental value, we get a bunch of nerds calling Luddite.
ffs people, thank the guy for giving us some information on a solution to a technical problem. That's what
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
I highly doubt either will get Slashdotted.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
That sounds perfect. I don't suppose you have any idea where one might get one's hands on RFID tags and scanners in bulk? I think one'd have to scan every book's bar code to add it to the database, pair that with an RFID tag and then attach it.
I wonder if it'd be possible to triangulate the tags so you can keep track of the books as they move around without trouble?
Humm...
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Chronological for the win!
/ Why yes, I am exactly like that guy in High Fidelity, except with books instead of records.
The ONLY reason we have the artificial concept of "Intellectual Property" is that the ability to be copied at much lower cost than the effort to originally create something causes problems in a scarcity-based economy, which is truly unfortunate since that ability is also what makes it so damned useful, and society could be so much more effective if there were no such restrictions necessary. Thus, the absolute bare minimum such restrictions is all that should be acceptable. If there are enough authors writing books under the current system, there's no need to give them further incentive by adding further restrictions. Contrary to some people's opinions, "monetizing" everything does not improve the way we live.
Setting a price on something is a way to fairly distribute SCARCE (rivalrous) resources. With "Intellectual Property", the only scarcity is in the creation, NOT the reproduction and distribution. Inherent, then, is that a reward system is (at some level) going to be indirect. We pay a price per copy as a poor substitute for how useful the original creation was, because there's no other good way to set a price on how much the original work was worth.
There's nothing inherently right about someone getting continued payments for doing absolutely nothing. Should you have to pay your plumber for the toilet he installed every time you flush it?
Another, less helpful reason for having long terms of protection on such works is to reduce supply so as to increase demand for NEW creations. To the extent that this reduces the amount of previously existing material that is available, it could actually be a net loss (except, of course, for those new creators, but that's the old broken windows fallacy).
I organise my library as follows: Every book gets some tags that describe it, and books with the same tags are near to one another, while those with dissimilar tags end up away from one another. There are no categories in my library, only tags. I think that if my library had a robotic arm, it could very well be self-organising.
Dude, I think this is an historical moment. We have all witnessed the very first Ask /. that actually has an answer!! Oh, by the way, pirst fost!
I use LibraryThing.com and a Cuecat barcode reader. Works great. It's free.
Can't complain.
But did anyone else read this and assume this was some P!=NP mathematics problem you just had not heard of?
."
I was going "The home library problem? That *must* be some variation of the traveling salesman problem, I wonder if the description is as obvious as it sounds . .
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Actually the odds are far more likely that he doesn't really need all 3500 books. There are a lot of people who feel the need to collect things to fill psycological holes.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
First, when talking about scarcity, we're not facing it. Compared to any other time in history more people have access to more resources than ever before. Second, it's pretty judgmental to say his personal library is selfish. What about your sofa? Do you have a nice one? How about your house? Your clothes? Your computer?
Will he work for bananas?
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Well, one could always wield an ax before visitors who can't sort of refile...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I think my omnipresent female would hurt me if I tried that. :P
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
I think my omnipresent female would hurt me if I tried that. :P
Mine would probably offer to help with the threatening as she tends to be a bit OCD about placement of things like books. Besides, she doesn't get enough time playing with blades in her opinion.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Try LibraryThing http://www.librarything.com/
Curious... there's no mention of LibraryThing or its CueCat!
Pathetic human race. Arranging their knowledge by category just made it easier to absorb. Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands! Ha ha ha ha!
I collect books and keep them for a combination of reasons.
I like to have collections of things. There is pleasure in owning every book Robert Heinlein ever published, the complete Harry Potter set, all of C.J. Cherryh, Robert Jordan, etc.
Opportunity cost. I may not re-read every book on my shelves. But there is the potential that I might want to read any particular book. If it isn't on my shelf, then instead of reading that book at 9 PM I will read a different book, one I might not like as well. I certainly will not get dressed, drive 20 minutes to the library or bookstore and borrow/buy that book.
Even if all today's authors stop writing today, there will still be more books left already written, than a human being can read in their life-time. The point is to keep improving the quality, and this is something, which requires reward... Many creators feel rewarded by the peer-recognition, but they all still need to eat, and I want the best of them to be able to spend more time writing.
But that's all about efficiency. There is also a fairness component — the fairness demands, that the creators are to be free to control the fruits of their creativity in any way they want. They ought to be able to burn it, to sell it, to rent it (for any price), to give it away — anything.
But if a particular author's terms are unacceptable to you, you can stick to reading the others... I fail to see the compelling need to force the control over a creation out of the creator's hands.
You are right — and paying every time we read something is a (much) better substitute!
I feel, there may well be in many cases. Doing something in the past may entitle you to being paid continuously afterwards. Writing a good book or making a good movie qualifies...
Yes, as a matter of fact, sometimes such a deal is quite desirable — small (or 0) initial payment, and then a "micro-payment" for each flush, until it breaks and he has to come again to fix it. This would be an incentive for him to do a good job and allow me to switch to a different plumber without paying too much to the bad one. See also "maintenance contract".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You know, whenever I tell the story of the two of us wrestling on the kitchen floor over a cleaver at 11 PM, people look at me like I'm insane. I'm afraid it hasn't happened in a while, though. Shame.
As it is, I'm the OCD one with the placement of books. I just can't bring myself to complain about guests rearranging them, it seems rude.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
In her case, it's my fault. I'm the one who started teaching her how to use weapons after all. =]
I'm curious as to why you were wrestling over a cleaver.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
In our Library we use barcodes on the spines and store them by the DDC headings. Barcode readers are cheap and fast, the initial time set up isn't bad as all you need is title, author and a synopsis. BTW we have WAY over 10,000 books done this way.
Cart
"Soft alphabetizing" works fine for our books (maybe 2 kilobooks shelved, more in boxes). Broken into categories, each category gets a shelf, authors or similar subjects are clustered together, easy. We use Book Collector, but the main question that answers is "Do I already have this book?" not "Where is it." (System not guaranteed to work once the remaining boxes of books are unpacked.)
To de-richbastard the thread a bit:
The CueCats worked for us, but I saw about a 50% failure rate. They're fairly cheap, so you can buy four of them for a lot less than the author's ISBN solution. I definitely agree that a barcode scanner is a must if you want to create a book catalog. It saves a tremendous amount of typing.
Staples has reasonably-priced bookshelves that 1) they will deliver to your house and 2) have 50% off sales every so often. Some assembly required.
OCR the titles? You just read the bar code of the ISBN number off those books that have 'em and it'll find all the data you need automatically off Library of Congress (loc.gov) or Amazon or a ton of other sources. Piece o' cake.
I sort by the color on the spine of the book. The blues go with the blues, which merge into the greens which merge into the yellows, then oranges and reds. It makes an awesome rainbow pattern on my bookshelf.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
"Data" a girl? I guess she makes Freudian slips at her apparel job?
deus does not exist but if he does
It's wrong because it requires a totalitarian state to implement.
Pompous and wrong.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Do you know the Dewey Decimal System?
(no reply)
CHOP!
She wanted to sleep with it under the pillow (she also has a katana in an umbrella stand near the bedroom fireplace and a pair of nunchucks hanging off the headboard), and I was afraid she was going to deprive me of some vital portion of my anatomy during the night accidentally. I told her to put it back in the knife block, she refused...
:(
and it sort of went from there.
In the end, she did put it back in the knife block, but I had to sleep on the couch.
Sort of defeated the purpose, I suppose.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
To quote Conan the Librarian: Don't you know the dewey decimal system?
You need to change the rules for your exit conditions when you inevitably execute the code segment:
DO WHILE husband_or_boyfriend_has_money = true;
Buy_Shoes = Buy_Shoes + 1;
*snickers*
I think I like the woman and I've never met her.
I don't sleep with one under my pillow, but in this place, weapons are always close (after almost 20 years, you get a few).
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
that someone suggested an orangutan. But don't call him a monkey, he hates that.
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
"Way to go, Montag", says Fire Captain Beatty.
I'm surprised the writer didn't evaluate Koha, which is a GPL'ed integrated library management system. It can handle Z39.50 MARC lookups. (For those that don't speak the lingo, that means getting cataloging data, usually from the Library of Congress' public gateway.)
Koha may have been overkill, I guess, since it also has a bazillion features for things like managing branch libraries, cataloging serials, and keeping track of vendor relationships.
I realize I'm probably way off topic here, but I absolutely love to see the followup on a good ask slashdot. Thank you for keeping us informed on your ultimate decision.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
In this era of consumerism, iPods with all our CDs ripped there and constant renewal in the pursuit of the best gadget I think sometimes the bes solution is the simpler one.
I will not deny that you may love books. But honestly, how many times will you consult one of the 3500 books? You would need to consult almost 10 each day for a year to use each one of them only once during that period. I stand to be corrected, but there is just so much one can really do on the 24 hours a day has.
I am sure a local library would be a more appropriate place for most them, that way people around you would benefit, you would continue to have access to them, you would unclutter your house. The benefits are many.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...that we need the mp3 of books. Not only I can't own 3.500 "real" books (I could afford them, but can't store because simply don't fit on my apartment), but also organizing them with appropiate metadata is trivial.
Only a good backup system is needed, which can be the same you use for your data (which usually is "none", but...), and some planning foreseeing the obsolescence of the format.
The problem isn't solved in general. They found the right solution for them. Since they have mostly American books, they can afford to ignore the rest. What if American books with a LCC classification are a small minority in your bookshelf?
However, I doubt it would be implemented like that. It would probably only allow a certain number of loans per book, which is a disadvantage to a real book. A friend and I swap books all the time, and we still keep buying more and more books. Then that would defeat the price advantage, to publishers, over a pure digital download.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
What's fair about someone else having a say in how often I do something that doesn't affect them in the least? If they want to keep what they've done private, I have no problem with that. Once they release it into the wild, for whatever reason, they have lost control of it.
Should the worker in the plate factory be able to tell you what you can or can't eat off of "his" plates?
Ok, so you spend a day installing a beautiful new bathroom for me, and plan to recoup your time investment every time I use the toilet, wash my hands, take a shower (do I have to pay extra if their are two people in the shower? Do you get to watch?) ... what if I decide I don't like it after a week, so I get someone else to come in, knock it all out and put in a different one. Guess you're going out of business!
Per-use charges only make sense when each use actually "costs" something, and even then is inefficient if the costs of tracking and collecting the per-use charges are more than a very small fraction of the actual cost. The people who complain about "having to pay for" cable channels they don't watch are foolish - for most people, they'll end up paying MORE for the channels they do watch, even if the cable company doesn't make any more money. Making it pay-per-view would be even worse, at least from the standpoint of quality and creativity.