Path: ...!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul S Person Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: [Meta] Wait, you sort your books how??? Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2024 08:54:52 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 74 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2024 17:54:55 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="e9f316e9441bfd3e127826ba7b59d883"; logging-data="3791529"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/ARviLjwwIqDlReNR7Pn9TjPHTCWqSbSE=" User-Agent: ForteAgent/8.00.32.1272 Cancel-Lock: sha1:o6AbwpBz4qlUj8Urb6cPsAlikbk= Bytes: 4676 On Fri, 19 Jul 2024 16:25:01 -0000 (UTC), rkshullat@rosettacondot.com wrote: >Hijacking the thread... >What software do you (or anyone else reading this) use to organize your >collection? We're in the middle of an extended move with all of our = books >boxed and either at the old house, the new house or in storage. There's = no >particular order to them and I'd love to just shelve them for "best fit"= and >have the software track their location. Ideally I'd like something that = could >read the spines (a lot of the books predate UPC codes). We have 14 = 6-foot tall >bookcases, half with hardbacks and half with double-shelved paperbacks, = so >manual entry would be a pain. I use a Home Database program (cunningly named "Everything I Own") to record the basic data and a spreadsheet for information that may need multiple values (such as genre).=20 The advantage of the spreadheet is that the entire title can fit in one cell (the database uses fixed-width fields except for one blob, which cannot be searched); the advantage of the database is that it can be sorted on each fixed-field column [1] (a spreadsheet is terribly easy to destroy by not including all columns in a search). Manual entry is a pain for many people, I suspect -- I wouldn't know because I actually /enjoy/ it. My favorite job involved a lot of what I called "complex data entry". My brother, OTOH, wiped out his database and gave up on rebuilding it book by book. So whatever solution you come up with, frequent backups to something other than the hard drive the original is on are highly recommended. As to the scanning bit ... I suppose in theory scanning the spines and using OCD might work. Provided, of course, that all spines have the info you with to obtain. And that the OCD software can identify each bit (distinguish, for example, between Author and Title so you don't end up with an entry for /J.R.R. Tolkien/ written by The Hobbit). Otherwise, you are likely to be spending as much time telling the OCD which is the title and which is the author and then correcting the result as you would have spent typing it in. There used to be such things as paper, usually with "Ex Libris" and a name printed in an impressive typeface on one side, that you could glue into each volume. I wonder if an RFID tag containing the author and title (and other info as desired) and then scanned like any other RFID could be created. Of course, manual entry would be required to set this up as well. Of course, you don't have to type everything: finding it on the Internet and using copy-and-paste would save a bit of time. Provided the person/OCD that produced the text on the Internet got it right, of course. So I think the short answer is: physical reality is tough, and working with it is tougher. Pre-planning is good, but the work still has to be done and, yes, it will take a while. Of course, you could always hire it done, I suppose. Probably cost a lot, but at least you would be able to do other things. [1] EIO can also restrict the display to records matching a range of values on one of the fields, and then sort within that result by the various fields. This is, no doubt, standard behavior for these programs. --=20 "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino, Who evil spoke of everyone but God, Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"