Who Doesn’t Love an Organized Library? Part 1

Organizing your Library Catalog

Organizing your home library catalog does not have to be overwhelming nor complicated. Let’s walk through it together. 
Any Mom who has started to collect books has the same question: how do I know which books I have?

How do I know which book I have?

That is a great question! I have bought the same book a couple times (multiple times, lol!). At first I tried using a spreadsheet, but that quickly became very complicated. Then I found a website. A beautiful, free website that advertised to be “a library quality catalog” and then it was love.

LibraryThing.com

LibraryThing changed my library organization. I no longer needed to use a spreadsheet, I had a LIBRARY CATALOG. A dream come true! AND I could tag each book with my own tags, ones that made sense to me. AND I could keep track of how many books I own! A very important feature, as we all know… I had become a bona fide librarian!

How to enter books

About a month after I found LibraryThing we had to move. Moving and having to go through my books was a perfect time to enter my books to LibraryThing. I grabbed one shelf at a time and entered each book on that shelf. It’s even easier now as there is a very nifty app that will scan the ISBN number off of the back of the book and automatically update your catalog. In all truth it was a long process but a worthy and fun one. I was able to discard any twaddle* that had invaded our shelves, as well as any doubles that had mistakenly found their way there.

A little bit at a time

You don’t need to be moving to be able to enter all your books in your library catalog, but it helps. Going shelf by shelf is very helpful to make sure you have all your books entered. I would grab a shelf full of books, enter them into the catalog, then put the books somewhere safe before putting them back on their shelf. This way you can make sure that you have all the books entered and none has sneakily gone on a shelf that you have already cataloged and been forgotten.

Ever after

Once you have cataloged your already existing library,the easiest thing to do is to stay on top of it. In order to stay on top of it, I enter each new book as it enters the house. No book can be read until it’s entered. It’s a rule and one that is strictly followed. When a book comes in the mail, I enter it right away, when someone receives one for a birthday, I enter it right away. When I get home from the thrift store, I spend some time entering my finds before releasing them. So we follow the rule, well most of us do, a certain husband has been known to not quite be up to date…

Tags

As I enter each book I make sure to tag it with all the tags that I can think I will most likely use to try to find that book again, even if I have forgotten its title. And also any tag that will make it easy for me to remember what the book is all about. As well as any important topic addressed in the book. You do not need to add the title nor the author as those are already included. It is helpful to enter which book it is if it is part of a series. Sometimes the algorithm will put it in automatically and sometimes it won’t, so double check that.

Example

For example if I enter A Little House in the Big Woods, I will tag it with the following: History, Late 1800s, USA, Wisconsin, Cheese Making, Hat Making, Smoking Venison, Pig Killing, (Mom), (E), (L)
For most books I use 

• Historical tags: History, dates or century, time period
• Geographical tags (Geography, continent, country, state or province) 
• Important topics tags, and then who owns the book tags. 
• The owner tags have proved to be very helpful now that the older children are moving out. If I’m looking for a book and it’s not where it should be, I can look up if I own or one of the kids that moved out. In which case I stop searching, lol. 
• Biographies: I also enter in parentheses the birth and death dates of any books that are a biography or talk about some historical figure. It helps me when I am planning school to be able to find all the people in a certain time period. 
• Book type: biographies, autobiographies, religious, science, etc…
• Seasons: Spring, summer, fall and winter as well as liturgical seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. 
  You get the idea, if I can think of it it will most likely become a tag.

I have been working with LibraryThing for well over 15 years now, and I can’t imagine running my home library without it. It has saved me tons of money (I have only bought the same book twice a very few times, and usually only because I was too lazy to double check if I already had it). It’s my go to to build homeschool curriculum, book lists, or just for gift ideas. Having my home library organized electronically has been a wonderful thing. 

Next up will be organizing your home library, physically, and teaching your family to put the books back where they belong, ah! Stay tuned!

Love, 
Mattie

* Twaddle: a word coined by Charlotte Mason to include any book that dumbs children down.