My Librarything, barcode scanner and I

Now I feel like a librarian.

I have been a member of Librarything for over two years now. And at the beginning of every year during the holiday break I continue my annual ritual of trying to complete my book catalogue. But this year I got fed up of the slow progress and with the state of my library tags. Something had to be done.

I had decided to start over again. I deleted my existing catalogue of over one thousand books of which I had previously hand catalogued. I used to search by name and author, then later found out that searching by ISBN was more precise. But the latter method also wasn’t necessarily quicker since typing in meaningless numbers requires much concentration.

That is where my new barcode scanner comes in. I bought a new one last week. And in that week I have been able to scan and enter around a thousand books. So my library catalogue is now back up to the around the same as before… all in one week. One wonders what I have been doing for the past two years. So I should have bought a barcode scanner long ago, but trying to purchase as little as possible (reduce consumption) had stopped me.

You might say this strange since I am acquiring so many books. Well, I won’t go into the philosophy of books and book purchasing but I will say I believe knowledge is important. And not only that but not fearing knowledge is important. My children love books and they have their own little library of books. Occasionally my daughter likes to pull my books off the shelves. She is at that age. She even likes to pretend to be reading them. She loves my Sun-tzu’s Art of War because it is pocket size, just right for her little hands. Tip: to stop them from wreaking havoc to your collection pack the books in tight, especially the lower shelves where they can reach. After a while they give up when they find they cannot remove them.

But I am digressing again.

So here are my tips for optimal librarything cataloguing:

Tip#1: Buy a barcode scanner.
I purchased the cheapest one I could find from Amazon Japan, like those you see in libraries or shops, for around US$70. This one was a CCD type, like a webcam. Some I found were one thousand plus dollars laser models. All I can say is a basic model will do.

Tip#2: Physically organize your books into topics.
If your books are not already organised I recommend you do so before you start cataloguing them. It will make your cataloguing task easier and smoother. The reason will become clear in tip#4.

Tip#3: Try NOT to use the Import Books feature.
At first I had thought this feature was great… until I discovered that many of my books were skipped or failed because it could not be found in the database. And then I realised now I cannot find which of my hundreds of books were skipped. If you do use choose to use the Import Books feature I recommend that you make your book import file in small batches.

For example, I have several bookshelves over in the main house where an internet connection isn’t available. That means I can only scan the barcode into a plain-text file. I usually make each file to represent one shelf of a bookshelf. So each file contains around forty books. And then later I import them into Librarything. The trick is not to import several files at once but one at a time. If an error occurs you can take note of the bad ISBN and hunt it down by narrowing it to forty books instead of several hundred, if not a thousand. The better way to catalogue your books will be explained next in tip#4.

Tip#4: Add your books one by one.
This might sound ultra-slow but it isn’t. Here is why.

On the Add Books page select the cross referenced database (Search what?) for which most of your books will be contained. Amazon.com may be the choice for most if your books are mainly in English.

Then choose a tag. I recommend to use a simple general tag to start. Because you can enter more specific tags in batches later once they have been catalogued. This way you don’t need to think about complicated multiple tags when you are trying to concentrate on cataloguing and also you only need to enter a tag once if you have organised or grouped your books (see tip#2). The Add Books page retains the tag information ready for the next search.

Next, in the Advance Options is a check box for Skip Confirmation. Check this and when you scan a book it automatically catalogues it, just like a library; no keystroke or mouse click necessary. And since the cord on my barcode scanner is long enough so that I can have my laptop on a table or even on the floor, and I stand at the book in the bookshelf and scan each book by pulling them out partially, enough to reach the barcode, scan it, then check that the book matches the returned result (I always make the font is large enough on my browser to check from where I stand), and then I continue to scan the next book without having to move from my position.

Using this method I had found I was able to easily catalogue forty books (an average shelf) in less than ten minutes. But this had all depended on the kind of books I was cataloguing. For my old books without barcodes and non-English books it had meant a lot of manual searches or entries need to made. I usually put them off the shelf and entered them by title and name search in a batch. But having said this it still helped me get through rest of the newer barcoded books, meaning most of my library.

So I hope my experience and these tips are helpful. Good luck.