The Home Library Problem Solved

Zack Grossbart writes "About 18 months ago I posted the following question to Ask Slashdot: 'How do you organize a home library with 3,500 books?' I have read all the responses, reviewed most of the available software, and come up with a good solution described in the article The Library Problem. This article discusses various cataloging schemes, reviews cheap barcode scanners, and outlines a complete solution for organizing your home library. Now you can see an Ask Slashdot question with a definitive answer."

Kind of ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I own probably more than 3,500 books, and for a such a pitiful number all this computer-based cataloging is overkill. My books are neatly organized in their shelves by topic, and I can find any in a matter of seconds - certainly in less time than it would take me to login, fire the program and type in my search.

Re:Oh, painful memory

[Deadstick]

Sorry, Slashdot deleted the less-than sign in front of "3500".

Re:There's this great new system

[Anonymous Coward]

They did consider the DDC, but opted better for the LLC. RTFA.

Librarian's Perspective

[jbriceiii]

As a professional librarian some of the analysis of the classification systems was not correct. First of all when you catalog a material you need to classify the material (classification schemes include LC, Dewey, etc) and select subject headings (the two most popular ones are Sears and LC subject headings). Even though classification and subject headings both have LC categories these are two separate systems and each has there own books and rules. The Dewey Decimal System number is printed in most books on the back of the title page. It is usually listed under the initials CIP which means cataloging in print. The number will look something like this 000.00 '00 '00 '0000. For home use you only need to use the numbers up to the first the ' . The full dewey number is meant to be used for very large libraries collections of a half million or more. For those books that don't have Dewey numbers you can easily assign Dewey numbers by using the first volume of the Dewey classification series, which is usually available at you local public library. The subject headings are also available in CIP usually with the words/letters Sears: or LC: . The author did not explain how he was attaching the call number to the book. You could do this easily by putting an index card in the book with the proper call number. As for software there is now a readily available open source program called Koha. This program has a built in Z39.50 search engine which allows you to scan in the ISBN number and search libraries that have similar books. You can then select the Machine Readable Record (MARC) which contains the call number subject headings and the bibliographic information. Since Koha is open source it is free, and quite versatile. Many small church and school libraries use Koha, along with the library I work for.

Re:You don't

[fyngyrz]

I have a ginormous amount of books, so I have two problems - one is creating an appropriate space [flickr.com] for them, which I have solved, and the other is cataloging.

For organization, I'm simply using PostgreSQL on the house server, which is hugely fast, completely flexible, and allows me to access everything from the web - so I can just drag a laptop in there, or work on any machine in or out of the house. A few lines of Python and bingo, library system. I may clean it up a little and release it, it could be prettier.

I tried Delicious Library (which I do use for my DVD and CD collections) and a couple of other solutions, but for large libraries, they were all too slow.

Re:Nowq he has to solve the home server meltdown .

[an.echte.trilingue]

It doesn't appear slashdotted to me, but just in case:

In March of 2006 my wife Mary and I owned about 3,500 books. We both have eclectic interests, voracious appetites for knowledge, and a great love of used bookstores. The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were. We lost books all the time, cursed late into the night digging through piles for that one book we knew must be there, and even bought books only to find that we already owned them. There were books on random shelves, books on the floor, we were tripping over books when we walked up and down the stairs. In short, we had a mess.

We needed to get organized. We needed a way to store all of our books so they were easily accessible. We also needed to integrate the two separate book collections which represented one of the remaining holdouts of our single lives. We got together and came up with a list of requirements for our new system. ...and yes we are both engineers.

1. It needs to be easy to find a book.
2. It needs to be easy to add a book to the system.
3. The systems needs to handle foreign language books.
4. It needs to be easy to maintain the system going forward.
5. The initial cataloging effort can't take forever.

To complete this project we needed a system to organize all of the books, a way to quickly add books to that system, and a place to store all of the books.

A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place

Our first task was to decide what system we should use for ordering the books. Most of the systems used to organize books are based on combinations of the author's name, the title of the book, and the category of the subject matter. Some of the systems provide a general outline for where a book should be and other systems are very specific. We considered three different systems: alphabetical, Dewey Decimal, and Library of Congress.

Alphabetizing

Probably the most common system used for organizing home libraries is alphabetizing. Books are arranged in alphabetical order by title or author's name. This makes books reasonably easy to find, but puts Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie next to Runner's World Guide to Injury Prevention by Dagny Scott Barrios. This organization makes it difficult to browse books.

Adding categorization to alphabetical sorting can fix that problem. This system organizes books into categories and then alphabetically within those categories. In this system the book Three Seductive Ideas by Jerome Kagan might end up next to The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker because they are both about psychology. This system makes browsing by subject possible, but it requires you to create categories for each book. Should The State, War, and the State of War by Kalevi J. Holsti be categorized as international relations, warfare, or politics? Creating categories which will work well with a set of unknown books is very difficult. We needed a system with established categories.

Dewey Decimal

Dewey Decimal is familiar to just about everyone who came through the American educational system. There is a good chance the library from your grade school used Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC for short). DDC assigns each book a number based on its subject matter. DDC organized all categories into three levels. The system has 10 main classes, 100 divisions and 1000 sections. The book Larousse Gastronomique edited by Prosper Montagne may have a DDC number of 641.3/003 21 - 600 the main class for technology, 641 is the division for food and drink, and 3/003 21 indicates the specific subsection specified in that library.

However, DDC has one big problem. The assigned numbers are not fixed. There is no central authority assigning DDC numbers to books and the same book can have a different number in two different libraries. We didn't want to spend time working out the right catalog number for each of our books; we just wanted

Re:Why do you _need_ 3500 books?

[shalla]

Why not donate, say, 3400 of them that you will never read again to a local public library? I have quite a few books myself and I'm contemplating doing exactly this (except for about 50 books that are rare, super-expensive or used often).

And as a public librarian, I strongly suggest that you ASK your librarian before you do this. If you show up at my library with that number of books, I will probably attempt to make you eat them.

Here's a previous Slashdot comment I made regarding how different public libraries handle donations differently and how they may be either a boon or a burden [slashdot.org], depending on the library.

Finally, if he enjoys having 3500 books and his family and friends use them, why shouldn't he have them?