I'm in the process of getting rid of many items, and the library was next on my list. Therefore, Library Thing is something I could really use! Unfortunately, it appears neither my iphone nor my iPad remember my password, and I don't remember it either, so I can't install it from the App store.
I thought my devices were supposed to remember the dadgummed passwords, or at least give the option of using a fingerprint. Well, evidently not. Now I have to steel myself up to resetting the passwords to something else I'm not going to remember.
Anyway, THANK YOU for the theoretically potentially future projected helpful advice...
About 15 years ago we had an opportunity (and funds) to buy 100 full size floor-to-ceiling white metal industrial library book cases for $20/per. So we did. (We already had dozens of various wooden ones). Even in our largish home at the time, we couldn't absorb them all inside the house (but we had plans...)
When we moved to our cabin in PA, we could only house (cabin?) 15 of the big boys, but since that was also an applicable ratio for furniture, etc., they are currently in storage with everything else (along with the boxed books that would otherwise be on them). Our ordinary reading is in ebook form these days, but the collectibles and some of the references need physical presence.
On the one hand, it would be nice to be back in a large enough establishment to fully flourish the shelving. On the other hand, ain't never gonna happen at this point, and at least I don't have to dust them. Sometimes you just have to seize the acquisition opportunity and hope for the best.
6 months and hundreds of hours is just the start. For larger collections just plan on a few hours a week for the rest of your life. I have between physical and digital library many 1000's of hours of time in organizing and managing it. Nit counting any physical activities such as racking books, building shelves, moving shelves, moving entire library to new home etc.
I spend at least 5 hours a week managing the library. Updating and fixing entries adding new books etc. Mostly in calibre for digital library that dwarfs physical one. Just books i have purchased on amazon exceed 4000, add baen,s book store, Barnes & noble, kobo, etc... i have larege chunks of project Guttenberg downloaded and in my dugital library also. It is a mess that will never be finished with just one persons spare time
time.
Just to curveball it i am using audiobookplayer to manage audiobooks. Its a bit complex setup and in my experience a bit tempermental but its open source. Its main function is to allow remote access to see and play audiobooks.
So. I have and have had this issue. I was unaware of library thing
thing. It seems to be a free cloud/web app you can create an account on? Correct? That us a very easy way to get started but i want to be sure ro warn people that a service given freely like this can disappear with all your hundreds of hours of labor really easily.
Sorry i will leave what i wrote about readerware below, however they have quit selling new licences and are only doing support releases for existing customer base. So it us not an option any more.
23 years ago i found a comercial software with multiuser capability that is designed as a small library catalog system. The license is a one off purchase untill the next major release then a smaller upgrade fee. Patches and bug fixes are free. It is called readerware . It can do boiks, music and movies. What back then i really liked was the ability to scan books bar codes and them to library. It also has a loan system so you dont forget who you loaned a book to.
I have about 4000 books in it and probably 1.5 times more to go. Other than 300 or so books on boats and boating all the others already in are paperback sf/fantasy. Still have 1000 plus hardbacks and 3 or 5 thousand non fiction to add.
There are some open source software systems but when i played with koha it seemed more complex to setup and use than i wanted.
Popular Open-Source Library Systems (ILS/LMS)
Koha:
The world's first free and open-source ILS, known for being scalable, feature-rich, and used globally for managing various library types.
Evergreen:
An enterprise-class system designed for large library networks, supporting multi-tiered management.
SLiMS (Senayan Library Management System):
Offers comprehensive features for circulation, membership, and bibliography management.
OPALS (OPen-source Automated Library System):
A proven system used by thousands of libraries for managing resources and web access.
BiblioteQ:
An easy-to-use system for personal, school, and public libraries, focusing on collections management.
InvenioILS:
A platform for managing digital repositories and library collections
Ok. Next free/open source and really easy to use that i use for digital books but limited to a single computer other than its web server feature which is nice but limited functionality compared to the application that will run on linux, windows and mac. Calibre. Im sure mist are familiar with it already. They added a feature in last year or so that can create a database entry for a book that doesnt link to a digital ebook file. So you can add physical books to it.
You are quite correct that an open-source project can, and has for many such projects, simply disappear. However, Library Thing has been around for 20 years now. Also, you can download your library records to the backup of your choice including in Excel and Tab-delimited formats for use elsewhere. https://www.librarything.com/export.php
Lol. I replied earlier but kept Coming back to your post and finally figured out why. My implication wasnt that opensource software disapears though that is very true but that closed source disappears. My thought is that software owned by companies disapears 4 or 5 to 1 over opensource. Even when opensource dies it often is just the name as someone forks it and starts it under a new name but the code lives on. I have several products i have been using 20 years or betterbthat have that happen. Conversly i have several products that i paid for and loved that were abandoned by companies as the shifted elsewhere, went under or were bought out. Inwould give a lot to be able use those old products again but they are gone.
I just wish you could download and run the software on your own server/computer.
This is a personal preference. I self host everything i use. It is beyond the average user over time to do this and i am with my health issues and age starting to worry how i pass this massive investment in time and digital media on to the next generation in my family. Im an IT expert, there is no way someone without serious IT chops could walk into here and keep everything running. Movie servers, music servers, digital book etc servers,
I manage calibre, readerware, plex, and audiobookshelf thats just the software. Some game servers hosting the server side of a few old multiayer games the kids and their frinds can play on. Then there is network storage of over 120 TB on 2 physical servers and 10 or so virtual hosts. with 70tb of data spread over them. With multiple layers os security and encryption. To be fair most of that is for client data and business use so it's a level or two in complexity beyond the normal home user. But i have my own streaming sevices, libraries, home automation and soon AI locally hosted and working even without internet. With internet i can access it securely from anywhere in the world. Over all it is a model of services i can show clients and say we can do this for you to. Just be aware it time consuming and has ongoing maintenance requirements which make it costly from a labour perspective. However it is all pretty much free from licensing or inexpensive at least.
Sigh.. but when i look at my 11 and 14 year olds and wonder if they will lose all of it due to the depth of knowledge needed to keep it in existence. There is no single hard drive able to hold the media so you need to replace drives in raid arrays and have backups in case of failures. You need to know how to access and use the data, etc... Its a lot.
I had my shelves reasonably well organized; Science here, philosophy there, fiction another there, scifi left mystery right, alphabetized by authors, texts the children should not read until they're older (Gulliver's Travels, for example.) on the high up shelves.etc.
I'm in the process of getting rid of many items, and the library was next on my list. Therefore, Library Thing is something I could really use! Unfortunately, it appears neither my iphone nor my iPad remember my password, and I don't remember it either, so I can't install it from the App store.
I thought my devices were supposed to remember the dadgummed passwords, or at least give the option of using a fingerprint. Well, evidently not. Now I have to steel myself up to resetting the passwords to something else I'm not going to remember.
Anyway, THANK YOU for the theoretically potentially future projected helpful advice...
About 15 years ago we had an opportunity (and funds) to buy 100 full size floor-to-ceiling white metal industrial library book cases for $20/per. So we did. (We already had dozens of various wooden ones). Even in our largish home at the time, we couldn't absorb them all inside the house (but we had plans...)
When we moved to our cabin in PA, we could only house (cabin?) 15 of the big boys, but since that was also an applicable ratio for furniture, etc., they are currently in storage with everything else (along with the boxed books that would otherwise be on them). Our ordinary reading is in ebook form these days, but the collectibles and some of the references need physical presence.
On the one hand, it would be nice to be back in a large enough establishment to fully flourish the shelving. On the other hand, ain't never gonna happen at this point, and at least I don't have to dust them. Sometimes you just have to seize the acquisition opportunity and hope for the best.
6 months and hundreds of hours is just the start. For larger collections just plan on a few hours a week for the rest of your life. I have between physical and digital library many 1000's of hours of time in organizing and managing it. Nit counting any physical activities such as racking books, building shelves, moving shelves, moving entire library to new home etc.
I spend at least 5 hours a week managing the library. Updating and fixing entries adding new books etc. Mostly in calibre for digital library that dwarfs physical one. Just books i have purchased on amazon exceed 4000, add baen,s book store, Barnes & noble, kobo, etc... i have larege chunks of project Guttenberg downloaded and in my dugital library also. It is a mess that will never be finished with just one persons spare time
time.
Just to curveball it i am using audiobookplayer to manage audiobooks. Its a bit complex setup and in my experience a bit tempermental but its open source. Its main function is to allow remote access to see and play audiobooks.
I have used this in the past and liked it.
Wow, this is useful. Thank you, Ms. Cedar. 🫡
So. I have and have had this issue. I was unaware of library thing
thing. It seems to be a free cloud/web app you can create an account on? Correct? That us a very easy way to get started but i want to be sure ro warn people that a service given freely like this can disappear with all your hundreds of hours of labor really easily.
Sorry i will leave what i wrote about readerware below, however they have quit selling new licences and are only doing support releases for existing customer base. So it us not an option any more.
23 years ago i found a comercial software with multiuser capability that is designed as a small library catalog system. The license is a one off purchase untill the next major release then a smaller upgrade fee. Patches and bug fixes are free. It is called readerware . It can do boiks, music and movies. What back then i really liked was the ability to scan books bar codes and them to library. It also has a loan system so you dont forget who you loaned a book to.
I have about 4000 books in it and probably 1.5 times more to go. Other than 300 or so books on boats and boating all the others already in are paperback sf/fantasy. Still have 1000 plus hardbacks and 3 or 5 thousand non fiction to add.
There are some open source software systems but when i played with koha it seemed more complex to setup and use than i wanted.
Popular Open-Source Library Systems (ILS/LMS)
Koha:
The world's first free and open-source ILS, known for being scalable, feature-rich, and used globally for managing various library types.
Evergreen:
An enterprise-class system designed for large library networks, supporting multi-tiered management.
SLiMS (Senayan Library Management System):
Offers comprehensive features for circulation, membership, and bibliography management.
OPALS (OPen-source Automated Library System):
A proven system used by thousands of libraries for managing resources and web access.
BiblioteQ:
An easy-to-use system for personal, school, and public libraries, focusing on collections management.
InvenioILS:
A platform for managing digital repositories and library collections
Ok. Next free/open source and really easy to use that i use for digital books but limited to a single computer other than its web server feature which is nice but limited functionality compared to the application that will run on linux, windows and mac. Calibre. Im sure mist are familiar with it already. They added a feature in last year or so that can create a database entry for a book that doesnt link to a digital ebook file. So you can add physical books to it.
You are quite correct that an open-source project can, and has for many such projects, simply disappear. However, Library Thing has been around for 20 years now. Also, you can download your library records to the backup of your choice including in Excel and Tab-delimited formats for use elsewhere. https://www.librarything.com/export.php
Lol. I replied earlier but kept Coming back to your post and finally figured out why. My implication wasnt that opensource software disapears though that is very true but that closed source disappears. My thought is that software owned by companies disapears 4 or 5 to 1 over opensource. Even when opensource dies it often is just the name as someone forks it and starts it under a new name but the code lives on. I have several products i have been using 20 years or betterbthat have that happen. Conversly i have several products that i paid for and loved that were abandoned by companies as the shifted elsewhere, went under or were bought out. Inwould give a lot to be able use those old products again but they are gone.
I just wish you could download and run the software on your own server/computer.
This is a personal preference. I self host everything i use. It is beyond the average user over time to do this and i am with my health issues and age starting to worry how i pass this massive investment in time and digital media on to the next generation in my family. Im an IT expert, there is no way someone without serious IT chops could walk into here and keep everything running. Movie servers, music servers, digital book etc servers,
I manage calibre, readerware, plex, and audiobookshelf thats just the software. Some game servers hosting the server side of a few old multiayer games the kids and their frinds can play on. Then there is network storage of over 120 TB on 2 physical servers and 10 or so virtual hosts. with 70tb of data spread over them. With multiple layers os security and encryption. To be fair most of that is for client data and business use so it's a level or two in complexity beyond the normal home user. But i have my own streaming sevices, libraries, home automation and soon AI locally hosted and working even without internet. With internet i can access it securely from anywhere in the world. Over all it is a model of services i can show clients and say we can do this for you to. Just be aware it time consuming and has ongoing maintenance requirements which make it costly from a labour perspective. However it is all pretty much free from licensing or inexpensive at least.
Sigh.. but when i look at my 11 and 14 year olds and wonder if they will lose all of it due to the depth of knowledge needed to keep it in existence. There is no single hard drive able to hold the media so you need to replace drives in raid arrays and have backups in case of failures. You need to know how to access and use the data, etc... Its a lot.
Do you know what that kind of pie chart is called?
I had completely forgotten about library thing. Thank you!
I have a carpenter husband, but in the new house I am running out of walls...
I had my shelves reasonably well organized; Science here, philosophy there, fiction another there, scifi left mystery right, alphabetized by authors, texts the children should not read until they're older (Gulliver's Travels, for example.) on the high up shelves.etc.
But alas, regretfully those days are long past.