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kingvozzo
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How do you organize your children's books? Or do you even try?
I've really been challenged lately trying to keep up with what children's books we have. Most of the time, my organization consists of just trying to keep them off the floor and the coffee table 
Do you try to sort them by author or subject? If they are sorted, do your children put them back where they belong?
I saw this Readerware Library Software on another list and it looks great. With the barcode scanner, you don't even have to manually input anything. You can also import your library list to y our palm pilot to avoid duplicating books. I've already suggested it to dh as a Christmas gift...
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Cay Gibson
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Noreen,
I have tried. Often.
I have a shelf with all my childhood books.
Another shelf for our FIAR books.
A shelf with our seasonal books which I try to keep in monthly/holiday order (I don't have this whole list but we have some and check the others out from the library).
Another shelf with religious books.
In my younger son's room I have a bookshelf. There is a math shelf, a science shelf, and a history shelf.  I really do try to keep things organized and neat.
That's about as close as I've been able to come to organizing our treasure trove of books around here. Not perfect, never complete. But if it were, that would mean that the books weren't getting taken off the shelf and read.
I much prefer finding the books used and misplaced than never used and neatly in order. 
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Cay Gibson
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Erin
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Noreen
Several months ago we had a really great discussion on this forum about organising your home library. The best suggestion from one mum was a colour coded-visual system. I've just been searching and can't find it  Do we have files on here? we must and I'm not looking properly. Perhaps someone can find the link?
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Tina P.
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Whoa! I think I'm MacBeth's speed on organizing books. Put the tall ones together on the shelves that will suit tall books and the short ones together on short shelves.  I remember MacBeth saying that before this forum ever existed. Thank you for that sage advice MacBeth. 
I do have a method to my madness. The picture books we especially like go into one son's bedroom because the kids don't normally play there and I want to keep those books in the best condition possible for the longest time. The history, science, religion, and math books go on the shelves in the dining/schoolroom. Classics and sets of books line each set of stairs' middle landings (we have two sets of stairs because we have two three-bedroom houses in which the maintenance people have cut doors in the upstairs and downstairs). Geography books are in the toyroom (no idea why...that's just where they ended up) along with books about horses, dogs, etc.).
We had a great plan for using our basement apartment main room (imagine this: we had a four bedroom house attached to a two bedroom 1/2 sunk basement apartment) while we were in Germany as a schoolroom. We only lasted 6 months in Germany and never unpacked a whole lot.  Leaving that wonderful house with a third storey bedroom for my two Rapunzels was one of the saddest things I've ever had to encounter.
Anyway, as you can probably tell from this way too long post, we move a lot and therefore have to fit into different spaces. There are a couple of books I'm searching for at present that I just *know* I own but I can't find them. I know where they *should* be  according to where I positioned others.
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cctabb
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I'll discuss it with dh in a little while and volunteer to be the guinea pig for the 30-day free download.
Fire has always been a big fear of mine since we have sooooooo many books (not all educational). We have discussed what would happen if we were home if we have a fire and one of us is supposed to grab the kid and the cats the other the computer hard drive. From simply an insurance standpoint I think something like this would be great to have.
So, I'll talk dh into the download and give a review.
Charlene
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MacBeth
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Tina P. wrote:
| Whoa! I think I'm MacBeth's speed on organizing books. Put the tall ones together on the shelves that will suit tall books and the short ones together on short shelves. I remember MacBeth saying that before this forum ever existed. Thank you for that sage advice MacBeth. |
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Hey, it works for me! I wouldn't want the local public library organized like that, though  .
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Rachel May
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Erin,
Here's the link to the color coding book topic. It was under Rabbit Trails: Storing Related Books in case I mess up the link.
Color Coding Books
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cctabb
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The guinea pig speaketh, "squeek, squeek."
The software in question is really great. Now keep in mind that this is the first of this type of software I have ever used. I've been playing with it for about two and a half hours and have entered 43 books in two seperate databases, all books and school books.
From an insurance standpoint, which I was very interested in, it is excellent.
For the home librarian I can't think of anything that it hasn't got.
The following is a list of fields that can be entered for each book:
Author
Title
ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
Format (hardcover, paperback, audiobook, etc)
First (edition)
Signed (yes or no)
Publisher
Published date
Place
Copies (number of)
Rating (I take it these are coming from Amazon since I used Amazon as an auto update selection site)
Condition (lets you be the judge of this)
Catagory (fiction, nonfiction, education, religious, etc.)
Read
Value (monetary in US dollars
Comments
Date Entered
Source (Barns & Nobel, Library of Congress, Amazon, etc.)
LCCN (I have no idea)
Dewey
User Number (Haven't figured that one out yet)
Copywrite date (The program didn't auto update that info)
Value Date
Location (I'd take this as what room, shelf, etc.)
Series (I'm using it as first, second, third, etc.)
Pages (number of, sometimes it auto updates, sometimes not)
Keywords (sometimes it auto updates, sometimes not)
Dimensions (sometimes it auto updates, sometimes not)
This information was automatically entered using only the ISBN manually entered from each book. The fields that weren't automatically updated weren't because that particular information wasn't available at the search site. For example my little Pray the Rosary booklet I entered the ISBN for my first search with the Library of Congress. Only a few of the fields were filled in. I then updated it through Books-A-Million and all the rest of the important fields were filled in except number of pages.
The biggest annoyance is the "read" field is defaulted to "No" so I had to go back and manually enter all 43 books as "Yes" It didn't take long to do, and I think there is a way to change the defaults. I just haven't looked hard enough.
The program will run various reports also. Such as:
an html book catalog;
Basic table report;
Basic image with comments;
a card catalog for Avery labels;
a loan report to see where your books are and who has them;
a spine label-Dewey for Avery labels;
and several others.
Personally I think that if you are trying to keep track of more than 50 books or so this program is excellent. If I remember correctly once you purchase the program you can get a barcode scanner to use with it so that the ISBNs don't have to be manually entered. And if you were to buy the bundle package you can keep track of books,CD's and DVD's.
Hope all this info helps someone. I plan on making the purchase when the 30 day trial runs out. If anything comes up and the program turns to dirt, I'll let you know.
Charlene
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cctabb
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Oh, two things I forgot to mention -
The program has a loan tracker which keeps up with who has a book and when it is due back.
The other thing is that it won't pick up these 43 books off my floor by the computer and put them back on the appropriate shelves. 
Charlene
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Karen T
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cctabb wrote:
Oh, two things I forgot to mention -
The other thing is that it won't pick up these 43 books off my floor by the computer and put them back on the appropriate shelves.
Charlene |
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Oh, well, forget it then! that's what I need most of all!
LOL
Karen T
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JSchaaf
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I purchased the Readerware software $40 and splurged on the barcode scanner. Awesome! I've got two separate databases now, all books and school books, but I'm going to start another one of library books we've read-we don't get a printout from the library so this will be a nice way to generate some paperwork on what we're reading/learning.
Go for the scanner. Very fast, and quite cool. And, once instructed not to look into the beam of light, it's job a five year old will love to do (she chose scanning over putting all the books back on the shelves...)
You can get cordless scanners that hold 500 ISBN's. Too much $$ for us, though. But mine is hooked up to a laptop so I'm just carrying the computer room to room to scan books.
Ok, off to bed.
Jennifer
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kingvozzo
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JSchaaf wrote:
| it's job a five year old will love to do (she chose scanning over putting all the books back on the shelves...) |
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I was thinking of assigning my 7yo to this job
Thanks for the reviews!
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kingvozzo
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cctabb wrote:
The program has a loan tracker which keeps up with who has a book and when it is due back.
Charlene |
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I could have used this feature over Thanksgiving weekend when my family was borrowing a bunch of books from me. I might never see them again
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Noreen
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kingvozzo
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I think the location feature would come in very handy as well. Not so much for telling me where specific books are that are out on our shelves, but we do have some books that we can't quite part with, but are up in our attic. If we had their location in a database, we wouldn't be scratching our heads wondering what happened to it.
I'm looking forward to getting organized!
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Noreen
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Erin
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kingvozzo wrote:
| I saw this Readerware Library Software on another list and it looks great. |
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cctabb wrote:
The software in question is really great. Now keep in mind that this is the first of this type of software I have ever used. I've been playing with it for about two and a half hours and have entered 43 books in two seperate databases, all books and school books.
From an insurance standpoint, which I was very interested in, it is excellent.
For the home librarian I can't think of anything that it hasn't got.
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Noreen,
thank you soo much for this recommendation. It is absolutely brilliant
Charlene,
Like yourself dh and I have been playing with this for the last 24 hours We have downloaded the 30 day trial and have already decided we will purchase it. Dh is very database literate and is very impressed with all it has to offer. As you've listed above there is so much its incredible.
Some questions I'm hoping you can answer, we literally would have over 2000 books however many of these books are old and do not have ISBN numbers. What have you done in this situation? So far we have been googling to find ISBN numbers but this is very time consuming and a bit of a pot luck situation. Hoping you have a quick solution here Some books we may have to manually enter the title and author I guess.
Love to hear how your readerware is going, or anyone else who purchased it. I'm very impressed.
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BrendaPeter
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OK, don't mean to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing but thought I'd respond to the original question & share my summer project. Here goes!
I keep our science books lumped together (by size) on a shelf (or 2). Then there's children's literature which also is lumped together. I keep the big hardcover children books together as well. The only ones I really organize are the history books, since there seem to be so many. I'm planning to put stickers on the spines with a number that corresponds to the century in which they take place according to the Reading Your Way Through History List. Biographies (saints, composers, artists, etc.) will be included.
HTH!
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marihalojen
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When I was homeschooled, my sister and I volunteered at the public library and we pulled the job of sticker-ing the children's library. All it involved was a hole punch, construction paper and tape. All the A authors were red circles, the B's were blue stars, etc...and we just taped the symbol on the spine toward the bottom so the symbols all basically lined up on the shelf. It really helped with shelving, for the kids, the adults and the workers!
Just another idea!
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kingvozzo
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I wanted to post an update to this thread. I finally got the Readerware software for Mother's Day, along with the barcode scanner.
I have been slowly organizing my book shelves. I have to say that I  this software. I have scanned or manually input about 800 books, but I have coupled this with trying to make my bookshelves make more sense. I have separated the books into very broad categories and will assign a "location" based on this broad category. I'm going to label my shelves to coordinate with the category, and I'm also labeling the book itself.
Some of the categories I'm using are, Religion/Saints, Kids' Religion, World Literature, American Literature, Reference, Parenting, Homeschooling, etc.
Some of the children's books that don't really fit into any category are going to be located on a simply numbered shelf, like "shelf 1," so it will at least have a home.
I'm really enjoying doing it, too. I just wish I could carve out a bit more time to spend with this project.
I would also like to start a database with materials we check out of the library, so I can have a record of that.
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Erin
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Noreen,
So pleased to hear from you
Isn't it all a BIG job! But so worth it. I haven't yet purchased it as my 30 days are not yet up. So far we (dh and dd) have entered 830 books. It would be much faster if they all had ISBN numbers but apparently they didn't come out until the 70s and many of my books are pre-1970 probably over half.As the scanner would be nearly $2oo dh said no to it.
I already had my books catergorized much like your ideas Brenda, thanks for that. But I'm finding it so helpful to go the 'next step'. My original estimation of 2000 books is looking likely out, we are now guessing at least 5000. So with that many books we need to do something.
Dh pointed out the library option to me, looks great. I like your catergories. I actually haven't been entering in a catergory I will have to go back and do so Although the ISBN books are automatically updated via the internet. Don't you just love the pictures of the book covers section. I love scrolling through that 'seeing' all my books.
I have debated about labelling the books, much like the colour coding system mentioned above, however as dh pointed out it may limit dd12 eclective reading. If she saw a sticker that indicated a history ficition she wouldn't read it, but as it is not labelled she will. Strong opinions
Pleased to hear that you are enjoying it. Time is the problem I agree. It was brought home to me the other day that from a replacement viewpoint this is a good idea. A hs friend's down syndrome's dd10, set fire to her bedroom and it was very fortunate that the rest of the house didn't go. If I don't have something like this I would not remember ALL of our books.
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kingvozzo
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Erin wrote:
It would be much faster if they all had ISBN numbers but apparently they didn't come out until the 70s and many of my books are pre-1970 probably over half. |
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Pre-ISBN here in the states, they used an LCCN (Library of Congress Catalog Number). There are many books that don't have ISBN's that have LCCN's. Also, Amazon has been quite helpful for pulling up info on books where the ISBN's don't match. I can look the book up on Amazon, then cut and paste the ASIN (I have no idea what that is) or the ISBN from the info section on the book.
Erin wrote:
| As the scanner would be nearly $2oo dh said no to it. |
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I have the CueCat scanner, which we got free from Readerware. Dh ordered the bundle... I would have just ordered the book version and gotten a CueCat from ebay--they're only $10-15. Would they work for you? Or is the shipping ridiculous? $200 is quite a lot of money, but our inexpensive little scanner has been helpful.
Erin wrote:
| I have debated about labelling the books, much like the colour coding system mentioned above, however as dh pointed out it may limit dd12 eclective reading. If she saw a sticker that indicated a history ficition she wouldn't read it, but as it is not labelled she will. Strong opinions |
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This is a good point. I think this is where my VERY broad categories will come in. Hopefully they won't turn anyone off.
Erin wrote:
| It was brought home to me the other day that from a replacement viewpoint this is a good idea. A hs friend's down syndrome's dd10, set fire to her bedroom and it was very fortunate that the rest of the house didn't go. If I don't have something like this I would not remember ALL of our books. |
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Absolutely! I'm surprised at the value assigned to some of my books, both high and low. We have thousands of dollars in books, including all the somewhat twaddly kids books that are pulling up for $0.01 
Are you also keeping a list of the library books you bring in?
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Noreen
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4Real Forums : Living Literature
Topic: organizing books
