When we put our house back together in December, we saved our library for last. The reason was two-fold.
First, we had our bookshelves re-stained and they weren’t finished until late December. Second, we wanted to take our time re-shelving our books, including cataloging them.
This is the result! It’s almost completely done. We still need a round rug and a set of steps to allow us to reach the high shelves. (We originally purchased a ladder and rail set for these shelves, but somewhere in our 3 moves we lost a wheel to the ladder that we can’t find a replacement for, and we evidently lost some of the rail hardware because when we tried to install everything the railing sagged, making it unusable.)
Still, we are quite pleased with the way it all turned out. We like the darker color of the shelves (They were originally a light cherry.) and the gray (versus the light green) of the room. And yes, we know there is a completely empty shelf. That’s for all those “to read” books in our bedroom after we’ve read them!
But perhaps my most favorite part of putting the library back together was the cataloging. Truly, if I could choose any other profession, I would have been a librarian. The cataloging kind, not the deal with the public kind!
After several searches, I chose the Book Buddy app for my cataloging. (Note: you do have to pay $5 if you enter more than 50 books, but I considered that almost free.) Book Buddy had two big things going for it in the beginning: it has a “physical location” field and a “loan” feature.
Those two things made my heart sing. But once I started using Book Buddy, I discovered more wonderful things. Like the robust ISBN search and the online search feature. In a previous app I’d played with, I had to enter manually the information for almost all of my books without scannable barcodes. And I have a lot of those kinds of books! But in my first almost 1300 books, I only had to manually enter 2. Wow! Once I got in a rhythm and knew how best to search, every book went pretty quickly into my database. The only “extra” step I had was adding the physical location field to each record. I put the room (L), the bookcase #, then the shelf number where each book is housed. Consider this conversation we had the other day:
Jeff: Do we have a copy of Shane?
Me: Yes we do. Tap, tap, tap. L5.4. It’s in the library on the 5th case on the 4th shelf.
And within moments, he had it in hand.
I still have books to catalog in other rooms. All the “to read” books in our bedroom and all the research and writing books that live in my office. But the majority are in. I’ve let friends and family know my library is open for lending—especially now that I can keep track of who has borrowed what!
The other bonus? No more accidentally buying a book we already own! Notice I said accidentally. We have been known to buy 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) copies of certain books on purpose.
That’s our library! Do you have a place dedicated to your books or are they scattered about? Have you used a cataloging app for your books? Tell us about your experience!
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In my previous home (nearly 18 years ago), I had an entire room for a library. Ceiling to floor shelves on all the walls. I gave away over 1500 books when I moved and kept about the same for my downsized house. The books in that previous library were catalogued and organized in a precise manner. That didn’t happen in my present home. Even with many fewer books, the shelves in my entry hall, my office, and my bedroom are stuffed and overflowing and not well organized. Sigh. I buy mostly ebooks and audiobooks these days, which take no room to store and are easily found. Still, I need to take the time to do a purge and reorganization of the physical books I own.
We gave away tons of books when we moved into a highrise condo a few years ago and didn’t have space. It’s nice to have space again in this house, but yes, it’s so easy for them to get unorganized! Like you, we are trying to do more ebooks and audio, but we still buy too many physical books. And we know our kids will toss 95% of them when we are gone. sigh.
When I was out of town for some reason, my husband and daughter entered my books into a data base for me. As I have received additional books, I’ve added them to the data base. However, I have not always had time to note loans, donations, etc. Unfortunately, when we recently moved from our home of 45 years to a retirement apartment, I had to give away the majority of the books for lack of space in the apartment. Consequently, I’ve not been able to appropriately update my data base to reflect what books I still have. I did donate all my large print books to the library of the over-55 apartment community into which we moved, so I still have access to those.
How nice to donate to a library you still have access to! But I completely understand the downsize and books. We did that for the few years we lived in a tiny condo in a highrise building. We are glad to have space again, but sometimes having space for books = too much buying and keeping! 🙂
I love it! Thanks for sharing! I love the tip about the app you like.
Yay! I hope you try it!
I love this, D’Ann! We boxed up all ourbooks when we had new carpet installed about 6 months ago. They are still in boxes because I want to have some custom shelves built into our front room. I haven’t gotten around to hiring anyone for that yet, but when I do, I just might steal your Book Buddy idea. So smart. And your shelves are lovely!
You should absolutely do book buddy since they are not yet in the shelves again! I’m so happy I took the time.
I’m so impressed! What a FANTASTIC library, D’Ann!
Thanks, friend!
When I worked at our main library, I’d take the elevator upstairs to our Cataloging Office and see our cataloging librarians if we had materials with cataloging errors. It was fun to see our cataloging librarian in person since these staff members don’t typically interact with the public.(Side note: Some public library systems and academic libraries require their cataloging librarians to work the reference desk on weekends based on operation need) Nowadays I send an e-mail for any cataloging issues to our Cataloging Dept. since I’m out in one of our neighborhood branch libraries.
I love it, Elisa! I worked as a support person in the ordering department of my university library, so I often interacted with the cataloging librarians in the outer office from ours. I was so intrigued by their work–especially when it became “all hands on deck” to barcode and scan the entire library collection for going to a computerized catalog system (back in the late 80s).
I volunteer in the church library and have for 45 years. Unfortunately,
the library will be closing this summer.
I pretty much keep my books in alphabetical order by author,
according to the subject matter.
I have 5 bookcases but can always use more.
Happy Reading!
I’m so sorry to hear your church library is closing! That is so sad. We grouped our books by category but since I could log their location we didn’t bother with alphabetical order. Happy reading to you too!
The church library is 80+ years young and at one time we were
the largest church library in the Southeast United States.
We have an inventory of Books, Books on CD and DVD’s for all ages.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of around 25,000.
Prayers are very much appreciated.