Project: Cataloging My Home Library

So since I've been quarantining home since February and I feel like I'm going crazy and my head literally feels like it's going to explode from overthinking and nothing to do, I decided to catalog my entire home library with a classification system (don't ask why-- I just want to do it and keep myself busy).

Anyway, with my previous librarian position, our collection was basically 90% from Chinese publishers and foreign books. I therefore devised our own custom classification system. I never used LC or Dewy. I'm not a fan of Dewy but if that's easier to manage than LC, then I don't mind. Although technically based on experience it's much easier to download LC metadata.

Anyway, please feel free to throw in as many tips as you can possibly can here as I'm starting tomorrow and I'm trying to devise a plan.

I have a barcode scanner. I have a label machine/maker. I'm ready.

FYI-- my collection is mainly print but I also have a lot of kindle books especially at this time to avoid ordering any physical items. So extra tips on how to manage both would be great.

Oh and I'm using Collectorz Connect Books to catalog along with LT (which I can't live without). I also use Good Reads but obviously that's rubbish to do anything complicated.

So spill away folks... help is need.

I don't bother any more, but for the first few years I put a (blue) sticker dot in the front of each book as I catalogued it. It made it a lot easier to tell what had already been entered.

>2 MarthaJeanne: Good idea. I'm still finding swathes of books that I missed cataloging, though I thought I was being systematic. A few I'm adding just to review before tossing them; as my quarantine project has been weeding.

I print reports. I've always done that even back when I was running a library. I would just print reports and then cross reference them, pile the books on the floor and then cross reference them a final time before I'm done. I had to remove my furniture outside the library so I have space to do this. Makes it slightly easier to move around and pile stuff on the floor.

Update: I've come across 2 more options for cataloging:
OMEKA and KOHA

I'm not really versed on how to run open source softwares since it seems they require assigning servers. That's a bit too complicated for me but I'm open for any suggestions.. any tips... any comments.

// >2 MarthaJeanne: Here is the Electonic Luddite's method. . . a few more key strokes but it is easy for me to remember!

1. Enter title or the ISBN number/LC number in the add book field on the Add books page.
2. I copy the information using "Control C" to avoid retyping later. .
3. Add it. If it pops up as a duplicate, I then delete it.
4. I search for it from the "Your books" screen and figure out if it's a different edition OR if I pulled my dummy move and bought it again. . .let's not go there.
5. After that then I have to start thinking a bit. . . that's almost as bad for me as to remember to put a sticker on the book.

It's a bit wierd but works for me.//

By now there are very few books left that haven't been entered. New books get entered when they enter the house. Even if they aren't mine. (He wants to be able to ask me whether he has such and such a book by prolific crime authors.)

At the bookstore yesterday I almost bought an interesting looking book. STOP! It was an interesting book. I gave the English eBook 4 1/2 stars last year, so I don't have to buy the German translation.

>7 MarthaJeanne: And I came across a book that looked very interesting, but LT showed that I had a book by the same author with the same cover but a different title. A bit of googling told me that I had found a very early announcement of the book, when the publishers/translator hadn't agreed on the title yet :-)

>1 Teacup_: I think it is an easy choice. If you want to use LT as book catalogue, you must enter the books in LT (since the import function is ... not so good). The export function in LT is quite okay, so if you want to use something else and that has a working import function, you can always export a copy of your catalogue from LT and import it into the other system. My personal guess is that OMEKA or KOHA is way too complicated for this task.

bnielsen I love LT so much and have been using it for over 10 years but Im not really a big fan of the mobile app and I need something with a good app. I would like to use LT as a social sharing platform as I always have but for cataloging and all its complexities, am trying to find something that allows me to do more.

OMEKA is nice but it's not really made purely for librarians or libraries in mind. It's more director to art collections, exhibitions and digital libraries.

Koha sounds interesting but I don't know how to use softwares like that. It sounds complicated. It doesn't seem to be like a standalone software to simply download and use immediately. It requires a lot of tweaking and has a big learning curve.

There's LibraryWorld which I have used for 10 years but not ready to pay the hefty price. And then there's CollectorZ. The latter is good but I can't seem to edit fields as I like :/

I can't believe there's no good software out there yet :/

OK, I'll bite. What fields doesn't it have or function is needed that is missing? Curious more than anything else. >9 bnielsen: 's suggestion makes a lot of sense as I do it myself and Excel or some other spreadsheet program produces nice reports that can be sorted any way you want.

ulmannc, I didn't get your question exactly. You mean what does LT lack?

I already mentioned I'm not a fan of its mobile app. It doesn't have the same complexity of the website. And I usually find social cataloging services distracting. I would rather have a standalone cataloging app for my personal use and use LT whenever I want to share and mingle.

I am not a librarian but have been cataloging my books that I have in my home. My garage has a lot in boxes. Doing it the old fashioned way by writing the information in a notebook and then I will add to LT.

I've been adding my book here through the "add books" method, and while I had initial plans to only add certain books and what have you, I've decided to just add things as I get to them if I already own them, (minus what I don't keep), and then add books as I read them or they make their way here, depending on what I feel up to.

I have training to be a library tech so I like to use LT to act as a sort of informal "readers advisory."

>10 Teacup_: "I can't believe there's no good software out there yet"

I get your point, but keep in mind that developing good apps is hideously complicated and thus expensive. Just testing if it works on any of the major phones is expensive. If I make a desktop program like say a new spreadsheet program I can just put it on GitHub or even on a website I put up myself and that'll cost me something like $10 a month. If I make an app I need to get it certified before it can come anywhere near Play Store. So don't expect any good free apps for catalogueing unless they are filled with ads or come asking for money contributions every two minutes :-)

Webbased applications are much easier, but that'll be like using the LT webpages on a phone for catalogueing. And you'll want to put your catalog data somewhere. So either use LT for free or pay someone to put up a server where your data might disappear or be sold or ...

Thanks for the feedback. I am aware of the complexities that goes into making apps though; however, my point was (or perhaps it's my fault for not making it clear what I mean) that there are plenty of cataloging apps out there but they're superficial. That doesn't mean they're ad-driven or lacking breadth and complexity. A lot of work has gone into them because some developer thought it was a good investment. I also don't mind paying for good service.

Many of the the cataloging apps on the market are either directed at people who would like to keep inventory of their collections to help them with their taxes or for movie/games/comics enthusiasts.

Very little are made with "information specialists" in mind. And frankly it's kind of justified because most librarians use the hefty automation systems their institutions are paying for at work but few like LT plan out a system similar to MARC record fields and good filtering.

Not sure it's a money/complexity issue as much as it's perceived lack of audience for these types of apps.

>1 Teacup_: Re: classification systems, I've been rolling some manner of custom system for myself through my head, just for personal use. I have tech training but no work right now and I would like to keep practice up. The snag with things like LOC or Dewey for me is that they are broad scope and my library is pretty narrow, and the bulk of it would inhabit maybe one or two sections. I thought of Sears as an option but I'll have to look at it again.

Do you have tips or ideas on creating a custom system?

>2 MarthaJeanne: Same, although the colour of the dots varied with whatever was on hand but it was the only way I could avoid doubling up on entries as opposed to actual duplicates.

>2 MarthaJeanne: I just moved catalogued books to seperate shelves. But that system kind of deteriorates if too many weeks go by in the process :-) I'm currently going through my books (just 2689 to go) adding physical dimensions and weight and checking if something's amiss. Maybe also incorporating the weird word >3 2wonderY: mentioned.

>19 bnielsen: It also deteriorates very fast if you have a teenage son at home who likes some of the same series his mother reads.

>21 Collectorator: I have some called ABC-shelves with 40 cm shelves = 3 layers of paperbacks :-)

>9 bnielsen: >10 Teacup_:

koha is excellent software. I use it to catalogue my recordings, particularly because, being a fully-featured ILS, it permits analytics as detailed as you wish and because it will import MARC records. This latter makes it convenient to download and import records from specialist libraries that hold your item.

Koha is, however, designed to run on Linux — specifically Debian or Ubuntu. Making it happy on other operating systems is a non-trivial task.

>21 Collectorator: We're all devotees of the IKEA BILLY bookcases, but I use a KALLAX (new EXPEDIT) 2x2 cube shelf for hardcovers. They fit the standard size children's hardcovers wonderfully, with no edge hangovers. BILLYs can hold paperbacks two rows deep. When I do have a place of my own and more furniture space, I'm getting a shelf with glass doors. My books currently reside on a ledge built into the room wall. Looks nice, but getting tired of dusting them off all the time.

>23 librorumamans: Thanks for the tip. I run Ubuntu on most of my computers, so I can easily experiment with it. (Newest addition is a Raspberry Pi 4 and Ubuntu Mate 64-bit runs fine on it.)
I do analytics on the export file from LT already by running it through Perl, an sql database, and Rscript, so I don't think Koha will add much to that, but it could be fun looking into it nonetheless. Hmm, maybe I could use Koha to register all those sd-cards lying around with raspberry os versions on them? :-)

>25 bnielsen:

Oh, I envy you your Raspberry Pi 4!! I desperately need one; doesn't every geeky nerd?

For me, the indispensable adjunct to koha is MarcEdit because it's so much easier to import MARC records through its Z39.50 client and then to tweak them in a text editor than in the staff interface in the ILS.

>26 librorumamans: Have you been watching the webinars that Terry has been having over the last several weeks? I don't use MarcEdit regularly; but if I did, I'd probably be watching all those sessions. I think they have been recorded.

>27 lesmel:

No, I wasn't aware of them. Thanks for the tip!

>26 librorumamans: MarcEdit sounds nice. I'm using a perl program, that gives me a z39.50 client and outputs marc records. I mostly use it to test z39.50 sources used here on LT. And secondly to search for weird stuff like publisher series where the information about the series might be catalogued in strange ways so a full text search comes in handy.

There's a similar program for SRU libraries returning xml, but that can be autoconverted to marc.

ETA: yaz-client is the name of the program :-)
See here for more details:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/317903#7153340

>26 librorumamans: I found this pdf that answered all the questions I could think of.

http://avengingchicken.online/misc/installing_koha_on_raspberry-pi-4.pdf

>30 bnielsen:

Thanks!

I'm interested that (s)he uses the Buster release of Raspbian. There was chat on the koha mail list that koha hadn't yet been tweaked for Debian stable (Buster) and for now should be installed only on old stable.

That could well be right. There's still a lot of tweaking going on with Raspbian and Pi4. There's also firmware upgrades with significant performance boosts. And overclocking and cooling tricks and ... So it's still a moving target. I've a Raspbian and a Ubuntu Mate distro running happily on it. I've also an Openzuse that is mostly working and an iRaspbian corrupted image and somewhere in my drawer there's even a Plan9 image. (And of course there's also quite a few Raspberry Pi's in various versions.)

And MarcEdit looks very nice. I used to be daily administrator for 3-5 local research libraries running Aleph and did various nice tricks with automated export of the bases in marc format. One of the fun tricks just counted the various subfields it encountered, so you'd get a report like

100 00 a(36700) b(35200) c(300)
110 00 a(1000)
245 00 a(36698) ...

It was like an xray of the whole base and our librarians would often use it to find oddities in imported records and/or editing errors.
Very useful tool in 30 lines of perl :-)

Thank you all for your wonderful comments. Thoroughly enjoying the interactions.

Koha was suggested to me several times and I wish I can try it but I'm really not that experienced in using Linux or Ubantu. There's really nothing better than using a database system designed with librarians in mind. No matter how good mainstream cataloging softwares can be, they're always lacking in some way or another. It's the little bells and whistles like the ones mentioned her that I really crave (being able to expert/import MARC records, good filtering features, detailed reports...etc).

Here's a little update on what I'm currently doing: I decided to go back to Collectorz (as I couldn't find anything better). I analyzed my collection and worked out the genres I need and subjects under the genres. I realized Library of Congress Classification System would be an overkill.

I do not own more than a couple of books in particular classifications and therefore I ended up with several random numbers that made no sense when shelving. Instead, I needed something more generalized and tailored to my specific use.

I decided to go with BISACs and tailor those further to my own. Some BISACs I kept as they are, and some others I edited.

Inside Collectorz, I chose to input my custom classification numbers under DEWEY since there's no custom number fields. I debated whether I should have a control number for each item but decided at the moment not to generate any. There's also no specific unique number for each book. Instead I printed out labels with the BISACS and then shelve the books either alphabetically (under fiction) and by subject (under nonfiction).

I double checked and both ISBNs and BISACs are now searchable in the system. At the moment I'm updating some ISBNs and continuing cataloging.

>31 librorumamans:

Following up on koha: the current release (20.05.00) is intended to be compatible with Debian 10 (Buster).

>32 bnielsen: I found out that I had uploaded the tiny scripts almost five years ago :-)

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/User:Bnielsen/MarkTools

so if anyone can use them for anything, just take a copy.

And since my "old" post in >32 bnielsen:, a new 8 Gb version of the Pi 4 has become available. And Raspbian is now called the Raspberry Pi Os. Things are moving fast.

Meanwhile I'm writing some R code to make histograms like this:



Ah, that is a bit tiny. Anyway, it is

Length Height Thickness Weight Page_Total
Proportion1 Proportion2 Density Grammage Page_Weight

Rather useful for finding rotten data, as in Weight, where the spikes for 100 g, 200 g, 300 g, used to be much higher.
The two graphs Proportion1 and Proportion2 show the Height/Length ratio and maximum(Height/Length, Length/Height)).

Another set of graphs show a boxplot of the same numbers. And I'm adding another measurement: How high would this book be if it was exactly 100 pages? That'll combine book thickness with number of pages and try to correct for hardcovers.

I've been on the site for many years, so I'm also trying to plot entry dates but so far I've only gotten R to produce a rather ugly plot, so I won't show it yet.
Another ongoing project is making a choropleth based on author nationalities, but I doubt I can get the data out of LT in any useful form. But it's a nice exercise in learning R.

I took a closer look at Koha - you can set up your own z39.50 server with that. And maybe get someone to add it as a library source on LT. That would be fun :-)

It's certainly not as sexy as using a computer to keep track of your books, but have considered using good, old fashioned card catalog?

>37 Gershayim: How dare! Card catalogs are sexy.



Seriously, though, LibraryThing is the digital equivalent of a card catalog without the beautiful, hard, shiny surfaces, isn't it?

>37 Gershayim: Card catalogs are wonderful, but I do like having the ability to view the covers of my books (because it makes it so much easier for me to find them when I am performing my periodical reshelving).

There's a library kit of sorts you can get online that has a date stamp, envelopes, and cards for making a mini card catalogue. I've legit thought of doing that, but it would be nice to have something other than a box to put them in.

One of the libraries at my university had a personal collection donated that included it's own cart catalogue, and it's still sitting in their office space since no one has had time to digitize it yet. The person developed their own classification system.

>38 aspirit: It's not, though. LT records morph and merge uncontrollably, and the social aspect of the service means there's a lot of made-up and superfluous data rolling around in it.

>41 Gershayim: Inside each of our own catalogs, Common Knowledge and other shared data aren't relevant.

>41 Gershayim: The data in your own library never morphs or merges. It's only when you get to the works level and Common Knowledge that happens