After 12 years, a completely cataloged personal library

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After 12 years, a completely cataloged personal library

1lovelytoreadyou
Modificato: Giu 10, 2019, 2:23 am

I've been a lifetime member of LibraryThing since 2007, and this weekend I decided to delete my piecemeal catalog that I've been adding to whenever I have a few minutes and recatalog EVERYTHING under my roof all at once. Luckily my partner has been totally supportive and helped me get through it, even though we found out that a good 80% of the collection is mine. I was a bit surprised to learn that all together, after a bit of purging of duplicates and selective weeding, we have less than 500 total items in our library. Since I've started working in a public library full time I've seriously curtailed my book purchasing habits, so now I feel like my library doesn't really reflect who I am or what I read anymore. It was a fun weekend project and jaunt down memory lane, and I am so glad that it is done. Knowing what is in my library will make me more conscious of what I add to it going forward.

Have you cataloged your personal library? Ya done yet? How was your experience?

-Nat

2Zambaco
Modificato: Giu 10, 2019, 4:11 am

I’ve done almost all of mine, although it’s been a project that’s taken a few years. I did the bulk of it a few years ago, when I was out of work for a few months. I find it extremely satisfying to look through all my books on LibraryThing, especially in covers view (normally, of course, I see only the spines).

It occurred to me the other day that, if the house burned down and I had to replace all my books, I have a complete record online for insurance purposes!

3ulmannc
Giu 10, 2019, 8:19 am

Hope I live to 100, can still see and still push keys on whatever a computer looks like in 2047(sic) so I can finish cataloging all my stuff!!

4lorannen
Modificato: Giu 10, 2019, 12:49 pm

Congratulations! That's quite an accomplishment!

I re-cataloged mine and my partner's entire combined collection (well, those that had barcodes, anyway) in a speed-test of the Android app about a year ago (video evidence, if you're interested, complete with brief cameo of my cat). At the time, we had about 400 tomes between the two of us—I'm not sure if that was more or less than I was expecting, really. It seemed on the low side, but also, I tend to weed out books I know I won't want to re-read anytime soon pretty quickly.

It took me another week or two to get all the un-barcoded books added. These days I tend to add new acquisitions immediately, although I do have a special spot on an end table for those that don't get cataloged right away. That gets emptied every month or two.

5melannen
Giu 10, 2019, 11:42 pm

I keep thinking I'm done, and then a few months later coming up with another set of things I think I should add, or a cache of things I didn't think about the first time! But I think I'm very nearly almost done, once I get to that shelf of very old children's books I just rediscovered in the back of the sewing room. Maybe.

Now I just have to go back through and correct everything and scan covers!

6MarthaJeanne
Giu 11, 2019, 1:41 am

It's that 'go back through and correct everything' that gets me. At one point I created a collection 'Needs checking' for everything added up to that point. Some of the later additions in there will be up to my standard, but in the early days I had no idea what I was doing. Still over 2,500 books in there. I'm not sure I'll ever get them all fixed.

7bnielsen
Giu 11, 2019, 3:20 am

>6 MarthaJeanne: That's also where I am. Recently I noticed a large batch of paperbacks all weighing exactly 0.5 or 0.500 kg - thanks Amazon! But at least it is a reason to go back and look at some of the older books in my collection.

8lovelytoreadyou
Modificato: Giu 19, 2019, 3:11 pm

Questo messaggio è stato cancellato dall'autore.

9ulmannc
Giu 19, 2019, 3:26 pm

>6 MarthaJeanne: and >7 bnielsen: I'm YEARS away from having a complete index. Since the used market in SE Pennsylvania is dead these days, my culls are going to the county library. At least they might find a home!! The Electronic Luddite.

10jonsweitzerlamme
Lug 28, 2019, 1:32 pm

Mine is completely catalogued, except for three books in Latin that I bought for very cheap in Mexico City that are lacking title pages: once those are identified I can be completely done! Of course, more books come in all the time.

11WeeTurtle
Lug 29, 2019, 4:23 am

I had such aspirations, but now I seem to juggle between what I would consider "collection worthy" and I was just own until I don't. Stuff is gradually making it's way in though, so I expect it will all be on here someday. The exceptions would be my personal "Archive" and perhaps the (Pretend) little free library for the farm here, when guests come. MAYBE I'll make a separate collection for my story time books.

I have found that my recent excursions to kid lit from school and volunteer have slanted my library away from my personal tastes and into what I've been reviewing. This is turn is slanting my ER picks to that as well. A dangerous cycle!

We have at least one good used place here, which has helped round out my collection. I've been putting the weeded stuff from my collections into the little free libraries I know about, if the second hand place doesn't want them. There's also local book drives around. Youth centers and such take them on occasion.

12Fjumonvi
Ago 2, 2019, 3:14 pm

I joined Library Thing on May 1, 2011, and began cataloging that day. Shortly after, I learned that I needed surgery, which was quite unnerving. Instead of sitting around fretting, I cataloged like crazy and had most of my collection done when I returned to work after surgery. (The collection was much smaller then.) When I acquire new books, I enter them within the week.

Last year, a close friend died, but not before instructing her family that they should give me any and all that I wanted of her nearly 3,000 books. I took only about 375 of them (many of the rest duplicated books I had already). This necessitated the addition of more bookcases and a complete rearrangement of my entire collection, which, in turn, necessitated changing the location code I include in each entry. After eight months of intermittent work, I'm almost finished entering the newcomers and changing the old location codes. I, too, am checking my earlier entries but am not adding weight or dimensions. I'm also weeding, at least nominally, as I go. Those I can bear to bid goodbye go to an assisted living facility or a library book sale. At the moment, my cataloged collection stands at just under 2,200, with some of my friend's books still to be added.

The foregoing covers just the books in the main part of the house. The overflow (in the laundry room) still awaits. How thrilling to have more books to catalog, and they're already paid for!

13dewasus1
Ago 21, 2019, 1:58 pm

Since 2007, I have catalogued every book in my house that I know about (over 6000) split between 2 different catalogues. I have my older son, at least, trained to hand over every book he acquires but have had less luck with the husband and younger son so I may not have quite everything. At the time I started, I did not know how to select different covers or how to add covers that were lacking. I also did not realize how often the pagination is wrong (depends on whether you download records from publishers or libraries). So, there is still clean up to do but first I want to actually read most of the many books I have acquired that I have not yet read. I have also catalogued most of the 7500 or so books acquired by a small rural library that had to start a collection from scratch starting 2 years ago. I spent my entire professional librarian career (as opposed to library page, etc.) as a cataloguer so I just find cataloguing very satisfying and LibraryThing is so darn easy to use (much more so than any of the 5 different integrated library systems I used during my career (DOBIS, Alexandria, BestSeller/BiblioMondo, SirsiDynix, Evergreen, then SirsiDynix again)).

14Verkruissen
Modificato: Ago 27, 2019, 7:39 pm

Questo messaggio è stato cancellato dall'autore.

15riaanw
Giu 16, 2020, 6:08 am

I've catalogued our entire home collection of about 2,300 books manually here on LibraryThing (it pleases my OCD greatly to do it manually). Indexed with DDC; shelved by fiction (general fiction in one area and speculative fiction & horror in another); nonfiction; "work books" in the study (book regularly in use for work purposes); and new books for easy reference to what I can read next.

16Keeline
Giu 19, 2020, 3:34 pm

Congratulations. I know that it is a big job. Yet, with LT it is less than having to type in everything as you might if you kept a spreadsheet.

It took us a little more than a year of diligent work to catch up to our holdings which are presently around 8,700 items. On vintage book I routinely added cover images of my copies for upgrade information.

The one thing I wish I had done along the way was to identify the location of books with a tag (the only possibility at the time).

I can't tell you how many times our LT catalog has settled a debate between my wife and me over whether we had a copy of a book we saw on the road in a used bookstore. So long as the catalog was kept current, we could know if we had an item with confidence.

James