Monthly Archives: June 2013

Books, Books. Begin with an App

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oldbooksIf you read last week’s article (the beginning of this series), and followed the link in it, you know that I think a library cataloging app/program is the way to go for cataloging your home library, large or small. I’ve been using Booxter for several years, and haven’t been displeased with it, but have desired a little more flexibility and customization. Last year I began looking, and testing out other apps. I tried several different ones, from free to more-than-I-really-wanted-to-spend. I also hoped to find one that would be a good fit for both Mac and Windows users.

Although I think Book Collector may be a good one for that, it is not what I went with. Since most of my library was already cataloged, I wanted an app that would easily import the work I’d already done. I did not want to have to start from scratch to enter my 2000+ physical books, plus another close to a couple thousand more in other formats. Book Collector, did not import well with Mac. For you that are starting from scratch anyhow, or have a Windows computer instead of Mac, you may want to begin looking there. It appears to have great features, and they were very helpful in answering questions, but I couldn’t try it out much for my situation. If you have Windows, that’s the best I can tell you about. If you have a Mac though, don’t jump too fast there. Use their free trial, if you’d like, but don’t buy till you take a look at what I did get.

bookpediaLogoLargeSo what did I pick? Bookpedia. Look for my next article to see why–and what features you may want to look for in a cataloging app.

Do you already have a cataloging system for your home library? If so, what do you use?

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Books, Books. Sidetrack.

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swans-love-heart-clipartWe interrupt this series for an important service announcement. Although I plan to not string this series on cataloging your books out with weekly posts, (I know you want the details sooner than that,) they are (now obviously) not going to come daily either.

Just when life seems to have settled into somewhat smooth chaos, it turns to overwhelm me. Thankfully this is a good overwhelming. Our daughter and her fiancé have decided to get married this summer. Therefore I will be spending more time doing things other than blogging. As said, I do intend to still post on this series every few days, and will complete it soon.

Now back to your regularly scheduled posts–soon.

 

Books, Books. How Do I Keep Track of Them?

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oldbooksIf you homeschool, you most likely have books around your house. There may be many. There may be few. They may be old. They may be new. (End of rhyme.) They may be real (physical/printed) books or they may be digital ebooks (on your computer or e-reader) or, more than likely, you own a combination of both types. You may also even have audiobooks that you listen to. As a homeschooler, there’s even a good chance that you are a bibliophile–a lover, and perhaps collector, of books.

If you have more than just a few books and/or more than one child, it may be difficult to keep up with exactly what you do have (in books, not children). There is a constant stream of free ebook downloads for home educators, in addition to the plethora of old public domain books available in free ebook format, and those can really add up and get scattered and buried in the digital space of your computer.

In this new series of articles, I’m going to address some ways to help you organize and catalog all your books–printed, ebooks and audiobooks. The not-so-secret answer to this dilemma is a computer database. But how to do that easily, though not a secret, may be not well known. It takes a bit of time initially, to get it set up. (How much time depends on how many books you already have.) But it is truly a time saver–and money saver–in the long run. There are many great benefits of doing this cataloging–insurance purposes being one–and it can be done relatively painlessly. It doesn’t (like you may presume) take long arduous hours of manually typing in all the info you want to store about your books.

Subscribe (to get updates to your email) to start learning how you can do this (or check back tomorrow). In the meantime, here’s a clip from what I wrote in 2008, on the beginnings of the journey I’ve taken to do this.

So, how do I keep track of all these books? Well, when children sneak them off and don’t return them, I have been known to buy duplicates. I see a book, and think, “Hmm, I know that’s been on my to-buy list for several years, but I thought I bought it.” I look on the shelf, where it should be, and it isn’t there, so I buy it again. Only later – usually much later – to have the original show up in some child’s possession. …

read the rest here

Have you ever done this, bought duplicate books? If so, you need to read this series.

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