Have other methods and systems for tracking your books? Tips on doing inventory? Stats about your personal library? I’d love to hear it all! Especially stats. Once you’ve scanned all your books (don’t forget the ones on their sides, which you may have to enter manually) and uploaded them to your inventory program, you’re ready to start organizing! I put books like this on their side just in case. Side note: what you’re scanning is the ISBN of the book, if the store you purchased the book from covered up the original barcode with one of their own, it may not be the book’s actual ISBN and therefore may not scan. Instead, just flip the book on its side and return to it later. You will likely encounter many of these, leading to towering piles. If you come across a book that has no barcode or has a sticker over the barcode, learn from my mistake and don’t pull said book off the shelf. Pull the book off the shelf just enough to grab the barcode, scan, push it back. You can scan straight into your cataloging program (depending on the system), or into a text or excel file. I recommend scanning shelf by shelf to easily track what you’ve scanned and what you haven’t. So you’ve got a cataloging program, a barcode scanner, and a bunch of books. Many, in fact, and some are built for your book cataloger of choice. You could buy one, but they can be expensive (though-not to continue fangirling-LibraryThing sells a cheap one in the shape of a cat).įortunately there’s an app for that.
Our free MARC 21 Service is used in more than 120 countries. We apologize for the disruption and any inconvenience caused. Scan your personal library shelf by shelf. The British Librarys free MARC 21 service is now available. Here’s the steps, and then we’ll dig down into each more below: Choose your program for cataloguing books (options below) Get a barcode scanner, handheld or app. Make sure it either has an app to scan books into or can upload. Use our free service to get MARC 21 data from the British Librarys catalogue, the British National Bibliography or the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). LT is super customizable, allows for both tagging and collections, tracks multiple reading dates, lets you to note where and when you got the book, and can helps you track books you’ve lent out.īut you do you: choose a program that feels and looks good, and suits your needs. There are many to choose from-there’s libib, Goodreads, booklikes, Delicious Library, and countless others (most I have not tried).īut LibraryThing-whose praises I’ve sung once or twice before-is my go to book cataloger.
You’ll want to choose a program in which to store your inventoried library. Start organizing and get into the stats.Scan your personal library shelf by shelf.Choose your program for cataloguing books (options below).Here’s the steps, and then we’ll dig down into each more below:
How to catalog booksĪlright, so you’re convinced. See? Eight reasons that aren’t (necessarily) about being a crazy book nerd. Do you own more books by men or women more sci-fi or historical short story collections or novels Americans or Brits? Inventory your entire library and find out.
You can also see in the picture that in this case, the Electronic Collection is shown on the page with the “institution” tab.
Here is a screen shot of the inside of Ex Libris’s back office part of the system (called “Alma”): The pic actually shows records we uploaded into it from eBooks MN ourselves from the free MARC records they offer as a download file. Thanks – it would be interesting to know how many of the Pressbooks that are currently available also have nice MARC records like the one I mentioned above.Īnother thing to think about is that the library discovery systems (these used to be called library catalogs) that are developed by vendors like Ex Libris now have functionality where files with the downloaded records do not need to be uploaded and re-uploaded again and again (as there are updates with new records and improved records) by individual libraries but can rather be re-uploaded//updated in one place where other libraries can draw from that data.