How I catalogued my personal library

You know I love lists. And I also love books. So what could be better than a list of books?

How about a list of my books?

I won’t try to convince you that you need to catalog your books, because you probably don’t. But having a catalog of the books on my own shelves is something inherently appealing to me, and it might be to you, too.

catalog-books

Over the last year or so, I’ve also been helping catalog and organize our church’s library as well as my own, so library systems have been on my mind and I’m glad to be wrapping up both projects.


SC047: How I Catalog My Books


What I used

If you use LT, a barcode scanner makes entering books go much faster (if they have modern barcodes).

So, for my own personal library, I used Delicious Library as my cataloguing software (Mac only) and the Library of Congress call numbers. I simplified the LCC numbers to only the two numbers following the two letters. What I like most about the LCC system is that it includes fiction and literature, and books written about a piece of literature are shelved next to the literature. For the church library, I used LibraryThing (online) and the Dewey Decimal System, because that’s what people are used to.

Remember my trick for fixing book spines with packing tape?

Going through all my books and entering them into my catalog has been a great time to apply some reinforcement to bindings in need of it.

How I categorize my books

About three years ago, I put a colored label on the spine of books that I purchased for our three-year history cycle. I used the Avery color-coding labels, and I’ve been pleased with how that has worked out. There are four colors in the pack of labels, and so I’ve designated them thus:

  • Yellow: Ancient
  • Orange: Medieval
  • Green: Modern
  • Pink: Nature, Science

So all pink-labeled books are always out and always shelved together. The history books only have the current year’s color out and the rest are boxed away (and if one weasels its way out into circulation, I can spot it and return it to its home). Two & three years ago, I would have each boy pick one history book and one science book to read for the week, and they would know what they could pick based on the label on the spine. After two years of that, they were simply in the habit of raiding the shelf for anything likely, so I felt it was no longer necessary to require it.

There is an exception: The hardcover Signature biographies we collect and the Childhood of Famous Americans books live in the boys’ bedroom and do not get labeled.

I’ve been on the lookout for Avery color-coding labels in more colors for over a year now, and have finally given up the hunt. They must not exist. I bought some dot labels in more colors, but they don’t stick very well at all on spines. I tried another Amazon search just this week, and had an inspiration: Washi tape. So, I’m waiting for my order of rainbow washi tape to arrive, and then I’ll add a color designation to these other categories:

  • Picture books
  • Free reading
  • Myth & fairy tale
  • Poetry
  • Early readers

The adult books I have labeled with their abbreviated Library of Congress call number, but not on the spine. The label is along the back cover, so it’s visible if you pull the book out just a smidge, but my shelves look like normal bookshelves and not library shelves. I thought this was a good compromise.

In my Delicious Library program, then, I have the notes line in the database where I put either the call number or the color-coded label of the book.

personal-library-catalog

Next up this summer will be adding our audiobooks to the catalog so I can see what I have easily. For those, I will note where the audio book is, too.

Process to Follow

So, these are the steps I follow as I enter books into my catalog:

  1. Scan the book into the catalog program.
  2. Lookup the LCC call number.
  3. Enter the LCC call number into the catalog.
  4. Make a label with the LCC call number and affix it to the book along with a “from the library of” label.
  5. Shelve the book appropriately.

In reality, this is simply a way for me to play with my books. I love going through them and handling them all again, moving them around and seeing what books become new neighbors as they move from my own intuitive shelving to orderly LCC divisions.

Similar Posts

10 Comments

  1. How many books do you have? I’ve thought about doing this but I’m not sure the effort is worth it. We have about 3000 books.

    1. I have around 4,000 books, but I started cataloging them when I only had a few dozen. I keep track of mine in Microsoft Word, and they are arranged according to Super-category, category, subcategory, author’s last name within the category or subcategory, and the year of publication. I use my own categories, not Dewey or LLC, and I’m never satisfied with how I have arranged things. It takes a lot of time and effort, and if you want to arrange your library, don’t feel like you have to do it all at once. If you want to do it little by little, just do one or two books a day. The task will be accomplished eventually. On a day when you’re bored and have a lot of time available, do as many as you can or want to. For the first step, you can decide how you want to organize: Dewey, etc., or by using your own unique system. Then pick a shelf, find a book that goes into the first category, record its position on Microsoft Word or Delicious Library or whatever tracking system you’re using, and place it on the shelf. If it becomes too much of a task or negatively affects your life, don’t worry about it.

  2. How many books do you have? I’ve thought about doing this but I’m not sure the effort is worth it. We have about 3000 books.

  3. Love it! I just bought some Avery Labels for Geography, was wondering what to do with so many. Wish the software worked for Windows.

  4. Love it! I just bought some Avery Labels for Geography, was wondering what to do with so many. Wish the software worked for Windows.

  5. We just lost 2 HOURS of school yesterday because I couldn’t find a book. I was so frustrated. I finally threw up my hands and decided that we needed a better organizational system. I posted this question on facebook, and people sent me to your blog. This article is PERFECT. It is exactly what i needed. Really, I need to just start checking your blog first thing. You have written about just about every thought that ever pops into my head. I am now a HUGE fan. Thank you!

  6. We just lost 2 HOURS of school yesterday because I couldn’t find a book. I was so frustrated. I finally threw up my hands and decided that we needed a better organizational system. I posted this question on facebook, and people sent me to your blog. This article is PERFECT. It is exactly what i needed. Really, I need to just start checking your blog first thing. You have written about just about every thought that ever pops into my head. I am now a HUGE fan. Thank you!

  7. I have long been wishing/working/waffling on how to do this, Mystie! I finally came around to washi tape this spring myself! and similar categories. I haven’t made labels, but I have also looked into Libib as a great online library tool, but I’ll have to check out the ones you mentioned as well. I also need to figure out a way to organize all my digital books on kindle and scribd. I have so many, but I forget so quickly WHAT I have if I never see it! I agree that it is not necessary, exactly, but, it just makes my heart THRILL to work on it and envision it done. ;)

  8. I am in the process of cataloguing my library of over 1500 books. I started to do this several years ago using a Microsoft Access programme. However, in the beginning I only applied the catalogue to my medical science and sociology (about 500).
    During this year, partly as a result of the pandemic and partly as a result of not now having a TV (my free licence was revoked by the BBC), I decided not to have TV rather than to pay the licence fee). and natural history books.

    I was also planning to have a room dedicated to all of my books and to have book shelves fitted to accommodate them. In planning this I decided that I would arrange the books on the shelves in accordance with the Dewey Code.

    My earlier beginnings of cataloging had included a field for the code but I had only included it for the books that had the code identified with the book publishing details. I decided to search the websites to find a way of determining the code for all my non-fiction books and some classical fiction.

    I was greatly helped in this process by several websites including: The British Library, The Library Thing, The Library of Congress Catalog, WorldCat, and the National Library of Australia.
    Despite the tremendous help that I gained from these libraries, I did find reason to question some of the codes suggested for particular books and amended them for my use as I saw fit to do so.

    I therefore intend to buy or make dividers for each of the ten sections: 0-99 to 900-999. This will then be the basis for placing all of the books according to their Dewey Code, in ascending order. This will be of tremendous help to me and to those who may gain access to my library for interest or for research purposes.

    Wish me well in my endeavors!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
https://simplyconvivial.com/2015/how-to-catalog-personal-library/
simplyconvivial.com
CC-MAIN-2023-40
155241
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:W3ZMZ2D4R5SDDRLJJJXWJO3D3JPITCZT
<urn:uuid:c2ac2412-25d6-41b1-a895-4d97ccd6e459>
2023-09-27T02:07:52Z
141.193.213.11
text/html
sha1:L5P52QHZV2MIHRSAGC2RDFJTVPSBAA5E
<urn:uuid:d3b7825f-0c53-4f8c-9c34-9d2c4fc08dd1>
https://simplyconvivial.com/2015/how-to-catalog-personal-library/
response
<urn:uuid:9634c566-8828-46d1-864d-27ee252db6b4>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2023-40
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September/October 2023
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-105
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/