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How to catalogue my library (beehaw.org)

submitted 8 months ago by gromnar@beehaw.org to c/literature@beehaw.org

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Hello! I would like to catalogue my library (I estimate in the low thousands but I am unsure of the precise number). I would like to keep tracks of several things, from the "obvious" like author, title, publisher, edition, to more personal like "when"/"where" did I get it. Was it a gift? Is a lucky find from that one trip to Paris, etc.

What's the best way to go about it? A physical collections of cards ? An app? I would like it to be selfhosted (maybe using sqlite as a backend?)

Any idea, suggestion or anything (including your experience doing something similar!) is welcome!

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[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like what you need is a database.

Maybe have a look at Airtable and Notion? Both have database capabilities and are quite user friendly.

[–] gromnar@beehaw.org 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for these pointers!! Will look into those.

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Both are (or can be) basically relational databases, so you have a table for authors, one for genres maybe, one for physical location, and one for books. You create a new book, and that "form" then gives you fields for Title, Description, Rating, whatever you need, and then pulls data from the other tables for Author, Genre, etc.

If you're not used to relational databases, the Golden Rule is basically:

If a data type is unique (e.g. Title, Description), it stays with the "product" (book, in your case).
If the data type can be used for more than one item (e.g. Author, Genre), it should (probably) have its own table.
You can take it a step further and make tables for all Descriptions, Titles, etc., and then those get related to the book by a unique key, but this is probably unnecessary for your use case.
All of this is incredibly simplified, and if anyone who works with databases sees it, I'm sure I'll get corrected 😅

Anyway, you might not need to think too much about any of the above, as both platforms have user contributed templates!

Have a look at this list of free Notion 'Books Templates', or this Airtable 'Book Catalog' template 👍

[–] gromnar@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Hi! Thanks for your reply. I work with databases and I don't need to correct anything, just thank you for devoting a bit of your time to my question!

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago

No problem, and sorry for the over-explaining; sounds like you've got more than the basics covered 😅

Also thought that it might be useful for any future visitors.

Did you find a good solution? 😃