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Re: [OM] OT - for bibliophiles

Subject: Re: [OM] OT - for bibliophiles
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:48:21 -0700
  On 8/6/2010 11:19 AM, Jan Steinman wrote:
>> From: Moose<olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
>>
>>   I'm guessing that there are many here who have relatively large 
>> collections of those old paper repositories of words.
> Over 1,200 and counting, all indexed and catalogued by ISBN and shelved by 
> Dewey Decimal.

On 8/6/2010 1:49 PM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
> I heard that!<g>  My cataloguing system for books falls under the "Where the 
> hell did I put that book?" category. They're all in book cases, I just have 
> to remember which one. Anarchy can be interesting when you can't find what 
> you want, but find what you didn't know you wanted.

My system has always been like Bob's, except the books come faster than the 
bookcases, or the incoming tide is greater 
than the ebb, so there's always overflow floating about. :-)   They are roughly 
categorized by which bookcase they are 
in. With collections from two bibliofools in the house for over nine years now, 
the whole thing has gotten to the point 
where neither of us can put our hands on what we want often and easily enough. 
Vagaries of memory and lack of knowledge 
have also come into play. "I'm sure I have that around here somewhere." turns 
out not to be true, and on the flip side 
we buy each other, or even ourselves, books we already have.

So I'm looking for something in-between. There will be none of Dewey's 
decimals, and shelving will remain largely 
quixotic, I'd guess, but we will know what we have. I too really like the 
serendipitous aspects of disorganized 
bookcases. I have this theory that some books come to live with me/us not to be 
read any time soon, but to appear at the 
propitious time. It's happened to me many times.

Fortunately, Carol is, like AG, a heavy library user. Otherwise, we'd be living 
in the Turtle next to a house filled 
with books. :-)

>> When we got back form our trip, a speculative purchase from China
>> was waiting at the PO.
>> <http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-Long-scan-laser-BARCODE-SCANNER-BAR-CODE-READER-255-/220431775090?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0
> Okay, now you need Readerware:
>       http://www.readerware.com/
>
> When you scan a book, it will go out to as many as a couple dozen book info 
> sites (including Library of Congress, Amazon.com, etc.) and assemble 
> information about that book, including full reviews.

I seem to have missed that one in my wanderings around the web. Looks nice.

> I think the ability to select from so many data sources and to concatenate 
> their info might make this more useful than BookCat.

BookCat does have links to download from 21 sites. It just takes longer, so for 
my first foray, the mysteries, spies and 
such shelves, I just went with Amazon for starters. I do like the idea of drag 
and drop, if it really works.

> I've exported the results to MySQL and made it searchable via a web page. You 
> can search my library at:
>       http://www.EcoReality.org/wiki/Library_search
>
> Typing "photography" in there gives 27 books, some of which have nothing to 
> do with photography, but had it mentioned in one of the fields.

Nice idea! I just tried it, and must say that some books have such long 
Comments/reviews/etc. entries that it's hard to 
browse.

Moose
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