Shelfies are a pretty common thing for Book Bloggers to post, I’ve never shown any of my shelves for one simple reason—for the last few years, my shelves have been a disastrous, disordered mess, comprehensible to me and me alone (my wife would frequently have to get my help to find her own books!).
But now, I’ve managed to get my library in some sort of order—the best it’s looked in ages—and I can’t wait to show you the pictures:
Sure, I’ve got a little work to do on the presentation, but I think I’m off to a good start.* It’s going to take me a little bit to get through the 33+ cubic feet of Fiction and 31+ cubic feet of Non-Fiction and get them set up decently and in good order, but I’m looking forward to it.
* Or, you know, not off to any kind of start at all.
While I’m at it, I think I should finally get around to cataloging/inventorying my collection. It looks like the best two options are LibraryThing and Libib, does anyone have any experience using them for cataloging? I’ve used LibraryThing a little bit for reviews, but not for adding a lot of books all at once. Does someone have another/better option?
wittysarcasticbookclub
This made me laugh. Excellent organization! 😆
HCNewton
Was hoping that’d be the reaction!
allysonyj
What’s the fun of having books if you can’t walk over to a shelf and take one out, browse a few pages, and put them back? My idea of organization is Neil Gaiman’s library:https://recklessindulgence.wordpress.com/2016/01/30/reblog-take-a-peak-inside-neil-gaimans-library/
HCNewton
Oh, no fun at all! I think I get to start unboxing today. Sadly, I think a large part of that unboxing will be discovering just how many shelves I need to get. I have some space for them, just hope it’s enough!!
ThemisAthena
Some shelfies … 😀
Librarything cataloguing comes with a bit of a learning curve, but once you‘re familiar with it (and trust me, if I can get there, anybody can) it‘s second to none. I started sprucing up my LT catalogue when BookLikes went down for several days in a row back in January — even before BL had its big de-facto meltdown in July, I‘d made LT my core catalogue, and I absolutely love what it lets me do.
That said, I’ve kept a backup catalogue on my computer for a few years now, too (Calibre — Bookstooge can tell you all about that), and I‘m not giving up on that one, either. (Fool me once …)
HCNewton
Spent too much time playing with what you and Bookstooge said to get back to you–sorry about that! I really appreciate the input and am implementing it.
ThemisAthena
No worries — glad to have been of help!
Bookstooge
Boxies, the new Shelfies 😉
I know that LT has a scanner option if you need to enter stuff in by the boatload, like you. I don’t know anything about it though, as I never needed it.
As for calibre, that’s for keeping an offline copy available. It’s just a fancy excel program with pictures and that can do about 1 million things. It’s best to organize your stuff elsewhere and then import that data into calibre.
ThemisAthena
That‘s the way I initially set up my Calibre database, too, yes. (You can, of course, also do it that way on LT — all it takes is a CSV sheet.)
As for the LT scanner, it works pretty well, though sometimes it takes a while for it to actually grab the code. But it‘s still quicker than entering book data manually … though not as quick as uploading a CSV sheet. And whichever way you set up your LT library, the power editing tools are a great help in organizing it quickly … I was done in a fraction of the time it used to take me elsewhere.
HCNewton
Thanks, am playing around with LT and Calibre (and enjoying it)
Bookstooge
Glad to hear it is being fun. I’ m at the point, where once I finish up my blog reviews, that I’m done playing around. I’m tired of recreating my data time after time. I have a feeling inertia alone will keep me at WP for a long time 🙂
HCNewton
I hear ya there…
BrokenTune
I really like LT for cataloguing my books.