The weeks leading up to this were less research packed, so they didn’t quite warrant a lengthy post or two about them. But this week, things began to pick up for the project. Fd2s purchased an account with LibraryThing which they have made private. This week, I’ll have gone in for about 15 hours to work on entering material. I’m lucky to have a couple of other people helping me out since our process is a bit complicated — many of the monographs that the collection has are older volumes and don’t have the flashy cover pictures in the system. To alleviate that, since the decision to use LibraryThing came about because of its visual appeal, we’ve been scanning the covers into the system. This not only helps our library look great, but it also does a service to other users of the system who want to make sure they do not have empty covers, either.
We have entered about 675 books so far – a bit under half of the collection. Another day or two should bring an end to the easy part of entering the books into the system. I’ve included a couple of screen shots of our library. Since it’s private, there’s not a link you can go to to look at the entire collection. The only challenges arising at this point include ensuring that the volume entered and selected is indeed what is at hand: a few times, I’ve entered a title in to find six or seven purported copies in the system, but none of them is actually correct – either the date or title are incorrect. I’ve gone through and fixed necessary metadata inaccuracies for our collection. Additionally, I’m anticipating a challenge when we begin entering serials. I’m going to go back to my resources from the start of the project – that is, the people who I have communicated with – and see how they addressed it. I’m almost certain I read a solution to adding serials to LibraryThing; it’s just a matter of finding it. While we can add it manually without a problem, I suspect the system has an option built-in for doing serials.
This image shows off the list view of the library system which captures the metadata and will allow wiki-style editing of certain columns.
Once the materials are all entered into the system, we will begin a tagging scheme. One of the ideas tossed out there was printing the library listing and asking people to write out tags. This seems like an old-school way to do it, but it will also be incredibly beneficial if for no other reason than it will show the impressions people who have used the materials have of them. In other words, a book with pictures of French design might have been used as inspiration for font and signage rather than for buildings, and having someone suggest that as a tag would probably be more true to the library’s use than simply importing the tags others have used on material. Since the collection is so large and time limited, it is likely many tags will be pulled from those used by others, if they exist. Another option is to seek out tags from other sources like Amazon, WorldCat, and even GoodReads.com.
Stepping back a second, one thing I forgot to mention was a secondary reason LibraryThing was selected as a good cataloging tool. The system allows you to download all of your library into an Excel sheet and store on your own system. That ensures extra security in keeping materials cataloged, and, since we’ve actually scanned a good chunk of the covers, that is also saved on the library’s own system. The ability to make sure this cataloging system is sustainable was one of the goals of the project, so we’ve made sure there are multiple methods of doing so.
So what about after the online system’s up? The plan is to explore the system that is in place now for organization — even though there is not a set system, there is some semblance of organization. That in conjunction with what we find when we look at tags should sketch out a shelving system and labeling system. That will be big step number two.
- This shot shows off the cover view feature of LibraryThing – a key reason why this cataloging tool fit the firm.
