I posted a link to the Library Thing, an online book catalog thing. I listed about 140 or so of my books, just to see how it works. Very cool! (I’ll be ponying up the $10 for a lifetime subscription as soon as I can!)
But that got me to thinking…how do you, loyal readers, catalog your own library at home or in your office or wherever? Do you take the time to use the Library of Congress system? Dewey Decimal? Some other system? No system? Pile ’em on the shelves and hope for the best? Do you have your stuff in your computer? Do you take the time to use labels and put ’em in order on your shelves?
Currently, I’m trying to use a modified Dewey system I learned in seminary. It’s not as detailed as the “regular” Dewey system, and it does have some kinks that you have to work around, but it seems to work for me. It also works right now because my Brother P-Touch only does two lines of text per label.
A sample label, say from Walsh and Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire looks like this:
227
WAc
227 is the general Dewey subject area, WA is the first two letters of the author’s name, and c is the first letter of the title. Like I said, there are some minor issues, but it works for me right now. Got any better ideas? Better yet, got some time to come put all mine in order on my shelves?
