Cataloguing books...

[fajrdrako]

Dec. 13 2007: Do you use any of the online book-cataloguing sites, like Library Thing or Shelfari? Why or why not? [Or . . . do you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking to?? (grin)]

If not an online catalog, do you use any other method to catalog your book collection? Excel spreadsheets, index cards, a notebook, anything?

Yes, I catalogue my books. I don't catalogue my books obsessively. Or methodically. Or consistently. I catalogue them on a casual basis. Occasionally. When I feel the urge to dust and I think, "I've got books I never catalogued, don't I?"

I don't use Shelfari. I joined Shelfari. I keep getting perky, friendly messages from them telling me that my friends also own The Lord of the Rings (I know) and the Dunnett novels (yes, I know). Mostly I ignore Shelfari. It looks too... colourful. Too complicated. Makes me feel lazy. I'd rather be reading than cataloguing, anyway.

To catalogue my books, I use MS Excel and I type in all titles and authors when I find the time. Sometimes also publication dates, when I feel excessively inspired. I started with the fiction. I don't think my non-fiction colection has ever entirely been catalogued. I like to think I mostly know what I have, and I mostly know where it is, and that might be stretching the definition of "mostly" but it seems to... mostly... work. There isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to it. Dunnett novels in one place, favourite hardcovers in another, biographies of English Romantic poets on a certain shelf, biographies of Julius Caesar in another... It isn't elegant, but I cope.

I'm not even going to start to talk about the question of whether I catalogue my comic books.

Comments

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I ought to, but I'm too casual about re-shelving for it to be worthwhile. It only goes by shelves.

Main shelves in living room, anticlockwise, bottom to top:

Asterix etc
Four shelves of language books
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity
Really, really tall books
Osteology and some archaeology
Nutter Books
Herbals etc

Other shelves in living room, top to bottom:
Biographies et
Linguistics and some mythology
Other archaeology
Big archaeology books
More archaeology, Sandman and Tardi

Upstairs: Back bedroom (where I sleep): fiction
Front bedroom: er... everything else. Six book cases of it.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I like your shelving technigues. I try (or have tried) to do something similar. For example:

Shelves by front door - cookbooks on top, poetry under that, borrowed books under that, with oversized books on the bottom and games in between. The Asterix books are there, along with the humungous and luxurious X-Men illustrated history that DK books put out, and the gorgeous book about Batman.

Beside the kitchen door: on top, Esperanto and Chaucer (because he won't fit with the other poetry books); second and third shelves, history and biography; then graphic novels (mostly Neil Gaiman and Legion of Super-Heroes hardcovers), and on the bottom, binders and books about media (e.g., Horatio Hornblower picture books).

Beside the bathroom door: a shelf of Latin and then general dictionaries (various langauges, A Dictionary of Angels and so on), reference works, computer books, books on autism, philosophy, yoga, Doctor Who videotapes - I don't know how they got there, but they did, and it's easy to remember them there! And on the bottom shelf, library books. (Those which don't fit go on top, on top of the Latin books.)

In the bedroom: fiction paperbacks and misc. fiction and unread things that don't fit elsewhere.

I have a new bookcase in the living room and so far it has 'stuff from the boxes in the locker' which I cleared out just before Christmas - odds and ends, I've no idea what.