msmemory_archive

Maybe you should give the doubles to your friends.

Liam

You wish they liked you as much as they like me. :-)

But it's not a bad idea....

It astonishes me that

dsrtao can not only keep his library listing in his head, he can remember the library books he's read, too. I swear he's set up storage in those parts of the brain that we're supposedly not using.

That 10% thing is just a myth; saw an article about it recently.

What *I'd* like to be able to do is convince my hubby to get rid of our duplicates. He seems rather OCD on the topic.

You're unlikely to run into the problem I did, but I listened to my first husband and we got rid of our duplicate books when we combined our collections. Then we divorced, and had to divide things we used to have two of. Ouch.

dsrtao and I don't have a lot of dupes, and where we do it's likely that one or both copies contain autographs. So we just kept everything.

That 10% thing is just a myth; saw an article about it recently.

It started out as some anthropologist speculating wildly, and quickly hardened into conventional wisdom.

What *I'd* like to be able to do is convince my hubby to get rid of our duplicates. He seems rather OCD on the topic.

Enh, for most of them, it's more like "yeah, OK, but when?". The OCDness comes up for books that were mine, for which the book itself (or at least the edition) has meaning beyond the actual contents.

"Project for the day" The Day?? THE DAY??? You have so few SF books that you can update the entire list in one day? Oh you poor thing, I had no idea things were that bad! :)
-- Dagonell
P.S. In answer to the obvious question, the non-media paperback SF takes up one bookcase made specifically for it that runs floor to ceiling down the length of the upstairs hall. The hardcover SF (which admittedly we don't buy much of), fills a regular bookcase in the spare bedroom. I have 9 boxes labelled "Star Trek" in the attic, with another 3 labelled "TV & Movie SF".

msmemory isn't just a professional librarian - she's a good one.

I'm astounded that they have so few new books that she can update in less than a day....

I'm starting to look at my house, and how crowded with crud it is, and thinking I need to throw out most stuff or otherwise dispose of it. This runs smack dab not only into my love of stuff, but against my most cardinal rule - "You can't dispose of a book".

Sometime soon I'm going to make some bookshelves in the attic, and just put the books I can't live without (but don't read) there. Let my heirs deal with them. (:-)

(There is also the real possibility that I'll be moving some time in the next 3-5 years - and it will take me that long to get ready. :-)

This runs smack dab not only into my love of stuff, but against my most cardinal rule - "You can't dispose of a book".

We're very slowly beginning to changed this particular internalization, to "You can't throw out a book." Library book sales are our friend.

(Of course, it's still near-impossible for us to give away non-duplicate science fiction. But at least some of the other strays have begun to leave the house...)

Not to worry! This is *updating* an extant list. If I had to rekey the whole thing it would not be a half-afternoon project. All I have to do is type in the stuff I've bought in the last year or so, plus the boxful of Star Trek books that Aunt Gail gave to us.

The list is 15 pages, 2 columns, 8 pt. :)

The list is 15 pages, 2 columns, 8 pt. :)

Wow, that's impressive.

How do you organize them? I am currently looking for a good way to get my books organized, and would love to hear about something that works well...

The holdings lists :) are alpha-by-author. We keep track of the SF and the cooking-related books only, because they're the things we collect. There's another list called Stored Books, which is organized by box number.

We used to shelve the sf by author, separating the paperbacks and the hardcovers. We no longer have enough room to do that, so they're kind of scattered all over the house.

In our Next House (whenever that is), there will be room to get all the boxed books out. Even if we have to build stacks in the garage.

you could always lend out duplicates hint hint hint...

I've finally found what seems to be decent cataloguing software, and with a barcode scanner, entering individual books should go quickly. The problem is that there's still so many that it's a daunting task. I also don't have nearly as much shelf space to display even a significant fraction of them, so it'll mostly be cataloguing boxes. That should, at least, make it possible to find a book more easily, and cut down on the the duplicates.

Another part of me says that in an effort to reduce clutter, I should get rid of the books that weren't memorably good.

I once lived with a couple of other book fans, in a house with many built in shelves. That was the last time my collection was catalogued, since we each tracked our books to make it easier to split the library when we moved on to other digs. We suspected there'd be an interesting household dynamic when we realized there we each owned and had read Machiavelli's The Prince.

What program are you using? I'm still trying to settle on one (made a little more difficult by the fact that I'm using a mac).

My first book list was done on a mac - I used a simple database program (FileMaker, I believe) and just typed everything in. It was a lot of work up front, but I've been able to maintain it ever since then. It's now in SmartListToGo, a PC/Palm database program so that I can have my complete list with me when I'm shopping.

I'm on a Mac, too.

The program that looks most promising is Books. This is a free Cocoa app under active development, with source code available, for tweaking.

I have to make one tweak to this to make it really useful to me. On the ISBN list import pane, I want to put a 'location' pull down list. Since one is likely to be entering a number of books from the same place at once, pre-setting that for all books imported in that pass (the other fields are auto-filled from a net source) will simplify things. Then, I can set it to 'Storage Box 1,' say, scan all the bar-codes, and get title, author, genre, cover image and more auto-filled from Amazon, while when I later look up that book, I'll see from the location that it's in 'Storage Box 1.'

Our books are still in the damp garage; a project soon is to put one shelf above head-height in the hallway, to at least start getting them out of there. The shelves on all the walls project in the front room must wait until we take up the carpet and the horrible tile underneath, and put down something else. ANd I'm planning acrylic panes across the bottom of same, because the kids like books TOO much for comfort.

Back when we had the big house, the duplicates were in the guestroom.

Oh, and on the second project of the viking dress, I was meaning to do that, too. At least that was the plan before Pennsic, so I'd have it for coronation. After Pennsic, I'm thinking that I want to focus more on building out my later period stuff. Then again, it might be moot. Between WorldCon, the onomatopoeic event, and a sailing race out in California, I'm not sure how much chance I'll get to sew before coronation. Good luck!

I was going to do something Extra Fancy for Coronation, but given that a. it's outdoors, b. it's Viking and c. everyone else seems to be doing it, maybe I should try Viking too. It would be cheaper and probably easier.

We should have a Viking Garb Day or something. If I remember at all correctly, some Viking is easy enough that it might be a good newbie make-your-first-garb type thing to do.

(Not that anyone has time for this)

We should have a Viking Garb Day or something. If I remember at all correctly, some Viking is easy enough that it might be a good newbie make-your-first-garb type thing to do.

Excellent idea -- having the viking reign means that folks can do something moderately simple and still feel like they're being "high court". That's a nice combination for the newbies.

Hmm. I wonder who could be talked into running this...

I'd organize it, but I have no hosting space, no machine, and no car to get to fabric stores. I can probably find people with some combination of these things (volunteers?), but I have none of them myself.

In fact, a major portion of my being willing to organize such a day is that I can't sew without finding someone with these things anyway.

Due to my new work and class schedule, I'm only available Monday, Friday and Saturday evenings. After the Greenwood Isle picnic might or might not be a time to consider. (I'm free Wednesday evenings too, of course, but I'd hate to double-book with dance.)

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Hmm...

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