Cataloging in the New Year

I’ve been spending the last few weeks adding more of my many, many books to my LibraryThing catalog. I’m up to over 550! Woohoo! About halfway there! (This is a slooow, manual process, since most of my books don’t have ISBNs or LCCNs I can’t take advantage of their auto-import function.)

My book database originally lived in an old Filemaker database that runs on an old Mac operating system that I no longer have access to. In the spirit of digital preservation (which I live with every day at work), I have been migrating my book collection database to LibraryThing over the past few years. This offers me a better, easier, more fun way to share my collection with you and others, and also allows me to export the books and use them in other new and exciting ways.

Which leads me to point out a database (available by subscription hopefully at your local public or university library) product from Alexander Streets Press called Twentieth Century Advice Literature: North American Guides on Race, Sex, Gender and the Family. I learned about this database from some work colleagues at the Library of Congress. Since there was an obvious connection to my interests and collection, I got in touch with Alexandria Street. We’re currently in talks about how we might share information. There is some overlap but they’ve got stuff I don’t, and I have titles they don’t, so it’ll be fun to compare notes.

And if you can get access through your library, do check it out. They’ve done a fabulous job scanning the books in full color and providing access. A joy to see (well, I am just a bit biased!).