Book cataloging

[celticdragonfly]

So a lot of this weekend has revolved around Cataloging Our Library.

That was the plan, it's turned out more to be cataloging significant portions of our library.

kd5mdk and jazz007 came up very late Friday night, and then we stayed up entirely too late after that chatting with them. Saturday morning after breakfast I picked up sandy_tyra, Rhiannon, and Shawn. We started out at it, starting with the paperback fiction, which got scanned, uploaded, checked, stickered with a star, alphabetized, and put on the shelves. More than 1000 paperback fiction books, not counting the "problem children", the ones without ISBNs or LoC numbers. There's rather a lot of those, as selenite inherited a lot of OLD sf from his father. We finished by about dinnertime, and were tired. Gerry Tyra came over, and the evening mostly shifted to computer stuff.

This morning after brunch, since kd5mdk and jazz007 were still here and still willing, we tackled the hardback fiction. We got an even higher percentage of problem children, but all the ones that could go in by scanning or isbns are in. Total so far in the database is 1272.

We'll have to tackle the nonfiction a bit at a time, and slowly go through and manually enter all the problem children. And then get upstairs for the kids' books, my crafts books, my midwifery books, etc. This will take a while. But we've made a good start, thanks to our friends coming and helping.

PICTURES! From today - I should have gotten some of the Tyras yesterday, but I didn't.

Comments

[taerin.livejournal.com]

Scanned? Uploaded? Do you have some sort of wondrous home-library organizing software tool? I've been meaning to make a full list of my own books for awhile now, but it's a big job, as it appears your own is.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Readerware If you order it on CD it comes with a freebie barcode reader. That helps for newer books, it did help for many of ours, but many are older books without barcodes, many without ISBN. Still worth having.

[msminlr.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find, as you get into your professional libraries, that most of them will have Library of Congress numbers, if-not ISBN's. Not as fast as scanning the barcodes, but it still brings back waay more info than you'd be willing to type in yourself.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

For the older books, we were typing in any number we could find - ISBN, SBN, Library of Congress number, whatever. The "problem child" books are those that either had nothing or the number it had didn't work.

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

Oooh, drool, two bearded geeky men surrounded by books...I didn't know you were posting porn.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

My dear, that was art.

The porn pictures haven't been uploaded yet. ;-)

[joyeuse13.livejournal.com]

"My dear, that was art."

It certainly was!

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Nice, isn't it? Definitely a good weekend in my books, if you'll pardon the expression. I'm sure we can get bearded geeky guys to pose for you in the library in person next time you visit.

At one point today Jazz came around the corner carrying a double armful of hardbacks held up against herself. She said "Andy says I'm STACKED!" I assured her this was correct.

[filkferengi]

I'll grant you the burly, bearded boys are cute, but did you see the *shelves*? Le sigh, le pant. ;)

[selenite.livejournal.com]

That's only a third of them. All full now that I've gotten the last of the oversized pile off the floor.

Book collections like this must be the fen equivalent of the shiny red sports car.

[filkferengi]

Only infinitely more shareable. ;)

[selenite.livejournal.com]

HAH! Mine, I tell you, they're MINE! There, there, precious, daddy will keep you safe . . .

Well, we let visitors read all they like. But I once promised to loan a book to a guy, couldn't bring myself to do it, and bought him his own copy.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

You are so cute, my dear obsessed spouse.

[filkferengi]

Oh, I definitely hear that. But then, I'm rather vain about being able to read the whole _Deed of Paksennarion_ tradepaper omnibus without putting a single crease on the spine. The Grip of Death kills your hands, but protects the books quite nicely. :)

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

So that's 1.2 metric Bryants. How much to go?

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Well, that's the thing - I suck at estimating numbers of books, which is part of why I wanted to do this. We have, oh, five bookcases full of nonfiction, mixed hardback and paperback, more hardback I think, plus various small collections of specialized books upstairs. We're probably more than halfway through. I'm poking along at nonfiction, slowly, up to 1328 total books right now.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

My estimate is a bit over 2 metric Bryants. I think we'll break that, don't know by how much.

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

Whee-ee!

Glee!

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling: There's a postively dragonish glee* in knowing that one has mor than 2 metric Bryants on one's shelves. And Properly Cataloged at that! Color me impressed.