Apparently, I have volunteered (or, I have been volunteered) to catalog/inventory the books in the library at my parents’ church. Anybody have any suggestions for how to go about doing this, other than using Excel or another spreadsheet program? Any hints would be greatly appreciated! 
Posted by: Amy | May 16, 2008
Question for my fellow librarians…
Posted in personal news | Tags: catalog
Well, you could always use LibraryThing.com. It’s free up to 200 books, and $25 for a lifetime membership after that. I use it for my collection. It’s got tagging and notes. You can pull the bibliographic data from amazon or one of hundreds of libraries. Besides its general awesomeness, it means that people would be able to search the catalog from home. You can see some churches that use it here: http://www.librarything.com/searchusers.php?searchbox=church (click through to see their collections). You can see my catalog here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/alwright1 . A pretty awesome tool. Also, you can get a scanner and add things that way without typing in all the isbns. You should be able to do the same thing with Google Books collection, but I don’t care quite as much for it (although I’m sure it’s completely free).
There are also lots of desktop applications for small or personal libraries. You can just google small library catalogs to see several at once. There’s a beautiful one for Macs called Delicious Library, but I don’t buy it because of Library Thing.
By: Andrea on May 16, 2008
at 7:42 pm
Amy,
Do you know Brooke V.?
She recently cataloged a church library. I think she started around the time we were in 500 together. I believe she is still around as we just had 507 together.
FYI it is the same church that Rachel works at — so maybe you’d get two SLISers for the price of one!
Let me know if you need more contact info.
~ Kelly
By: readingkelly on May 17, 2008
at 9:01 am
I thought I remembered that someone in one of my classes was cataloging a church library. But I don’t know how to contact her. Thanks for your help!
Amy
By: Amy on May 19, 2008
at 10:25 am
Seconding the Librarything recommendation. It’s an incredible tool, and they’re constantly developing new additions to it as well.
By: Matt Hoy on May 19, 2008
at 2:54 pm