Mark Atwood -

Thread started by Shasta

	From: mothball_07	Date: January 6th, 2006 09:39 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Ok - I'm curious. I have many books. Books in every room, despite my best efforts to cull them regularly.

But I've never felt the slightest urge to organize them electronically. The home-remodeling books are usually *here*, and the childhood heirloom books *there* and... and if they aren't, a database isn't going to help me figure out which boneheaded location I left them in. I'm also generally pretty comfortable that I have a sense of the totallity of my collection. I know if something is in it or not, unless of course I've loaned it out and not gotten in back, in which case, again...

What is the appeal?

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	From: radarrider	Date: January 6th, 2006 09:52 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I can think of a couple things:

You can use it to find people who like the same authors you do. You can then see what else they like that you might like.
People can view your library list to make sure the book they're about to get you for a gift isn't already in your library, or to get ideas on what kinds of books you'd like as gifts.

It has a rating system. People can look and see what books you really liked, and possibly cross-reference with others to see if they liked the books as well.

It seems to me that it's as much about community as it is about cataloging your collection.

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	From: mothball_07	Date: January 6th, 2006 10:51 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I just followed his update link and suddenly grokked.

Now *I* know where to go borrow cool books. :)

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	From: fallenpegasus	Date: January 7th, 2006 12:03 am (UTC)		(Link)

Which means, of course, that now you need to start putting your own into the database.

There are some pretty good commercial and some pretty good open source personal library catalog programs, and they integrate with inexpensive barcode scanners.

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	From: mothball_07	Date: January 7th, 2006 12:30 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Hmmmm....

I might be persuaded to do so when, say, I'm boxing or unboxing my books from a move, if I were able to borrow a scanner. Otherwise I can't imagine taking the time. (Though my son might enjoy doing so...)

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	From: fallenpegasus	Date: January 7th, 2006 02:33 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: Hmmmm....

My mom would often use her kids for low grade decentralized tasks like that.

Get some free booktracking software and an old cuecat barcode scanner, and give him the task of scanning five books each day.

In a year, he'll have several thousand scanned.

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	From: max_kaneru	Date: January 7th, 2006 08:49 am (UTC)		(Link)

Ooooh - this is fabulous. Incredible. Thanks.

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