Hello DOVE-Net Dialers,

I've embarked on a project recently that I haven't found a lot of
information on and I'm not sure how many other people have done such a
thing: I'm building a complete and (to the best of my abilities)
accurate card catalog of my entire home library, which is probably ~500
books, not including films, music albums, or video games/software.

I've already done some cataloging using a fairly simple web service (libib.com) that supports UPC/EAN/ISBN barcode scanning, and I've
figured out how to manually format and print cards for the physical
index. Finding a way to automate this part would be fantastic, but it's currently beyond my skill as a developer to automate it myself.

What I'm considering now is the final structure of the index/catalog as
well as the sorting system for the books on shelves. I don't intend to
label my books with Call Numbers, so I probably won't be using those and
will be sticking to a simpler subject / alphabetical by author shelving system. I've done some research on the national and international
standards for library cataloging (AACR2 is the one for the English
libraries in North America), but those systems are very in-depth and not easily scaled down or learned by laypersons - All the reference books
I've found for them are $50 or so and I haven't found much in the way of concise primers. I may end up trying to make a distilled Dewey decimal
sort of catalog/shelving system, but I want to make sure it's as
complete and useful for cross-referencing as possible, including
containing as much library-esque useful data (outside of call numbers)
as possible.

So, has anyone else done something like this before? Any current or
former librarians out there with pointers? Has anyone seen any sort of
open source / freeware software that can auto-generate catalog cards
from ISBNs or a CSV? Thanks for any input you may have! I'm eager to
hear your thoughts.

P.S. Just to head off the "Why" question for the real, physical card
catalog, just because I can and it sounds fun. :P

---
þ Synchronet þ thePharcyde_ telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin)

Re: Home Library / Cataloging
By: Telerophon to Dovenet.Hobbies on Wed Jan 28 2015 09:55 pm

What I'm considering now is the final structure of the index/catalog as
well as the sorting system for the books on shelves. I don't intend to
label my books with Call Numbers, so I probably won't be using those and will be sticking to a simpler subject / alphabetical by author shelving system. I've done some research on the national and international
standards for library cataloging (AACR2 is the one for the English
libraries in North America), but those systems are very in-depth and not easily scaled down or learned by laypersons - All the reference books
I've found for them are $50 or so and I haven't found much in the way of concise primers. I may end up trying to make a distilled Dewey decimal
sort of catalog/shelving system, but I want to make sure it's as
complete and useful for cross-referencing as possible, including
containing as much library-esque useful data (outside of call numbers)
as possible.

So, has anyone else done something like this before? Any current or
former librarians out there with pointers? Has anyone seen any sort of
open source / freeware software that can auto-generate catalog cards
from ISBNs or a CSV? Thanks for any input you may have! I'm eager to
hear your thoughts.

Oddly enough, one of the projects I've been working on at the office has been to rescue our corporate library from oblivion, so I've had to learn how to do cataloguing from scratch. And, since this is an unofficial project, I've had
to learn how to do it on the cheap. So, I hear you.

The closest thing I've found to making cards is BiblioteQ. That's a computerized cataloguing tool that plugs into a backend database. I know you have that part of it figured out already, but it does have a widget in it
that will take an ISBN and auto-lookup in the Library of Congress database,
and pull in all of the cataloguing information.

If you want to use a system that pulls in as much "library-esque" information as you can, there isn't really a good substitute for something like AACR2 (which is specifically built to support card cataloguing) or RDA (which, uh, isn't). Actually, AACR is (at its base) just a way to format the cards so that everything is in a particular order and format. If all you want is to make
sure that you've recorded everything, the easiest and cheapest plan might be
to use Chicago Style citations on your cards (see http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html).

The standard is to have one main heading card, which lists all the data on
your material, and then additional "added entry" cards for the title, subject(s), and any additional authors. Those added entry cards mostly just contain the heading you're using, followed by all or part of the main entry.

As far as shelving things, we just went ahead and got a copy of the Dewey Decimal System. You might be able to get an old version cheap on the used
books market, if you want it, but it sounds like you don't. I would encourage you to use that or Library of Congress numbering: no sense in reinventing the wheel, and both systems are reasonably easy to work with (L of C in
particular, since you can look those up for most published works on the
Library of Congress catalog).

I don't know if that helps or not, but let me know.
---
Morrand
þ Synchronet þ The Inflection Point - amorriseng.com