Organizing texts

[philosophia]

Has anyone here had experience with putting together a system to keep track of books and articles that they own? This would include something like "call numbers" (or at least "shelf numbers") in order to be sure I can find the book I am looking for. I'm anticipating an increasing library over the next several years, and want to get organized before it's too late.

I am planning to use endnote, and am wondering if anyone here has done so and has any suggestions on how to make it both easy and helpful. Specifically, how did you organize the actual books on bookshelves -- an actual library cataloging system, your own version that is more appropriate to your discipline, or something more informal (just general catagories)? I have a lot of time this summer to devote to perfecting this, but I want to make sure that this is easy maintain without much time as I add books.

Any advice would be great!

[DespSeekPhd]

Wow. That's far too much work.

We own approximately 1000 books in all different catagories. They're looosly grouped, but ther's still a lot of scatter. I know what I own, and I know where it is, and if it isn't, I check the other places it might be. Inefficient? Probably. But it never takes me more than 10 minutes to find something, and usually less. You'll probably find that you know exactly what you have and where it is.

Incidentally, I have bookshelves EVERYWHERE. Can't wait to get bigger house and centralize everything in one room.

[Minnesotan]

Haha! It's kind of sad, really. My dream isn't to make a ton of money, or drive around in Italian sports cars; it's to have a nice big library in my house. One with bookshelves that match (and don't lean at twenty degree angles), and a whole bunch of good books. I've got the books area halfway covered, but the rest of it might be a few years.

[DespSeekPhd]

Ah, the mark of a true academic - books and books and books and the dream of a home library. I'm darn close to it, too - yay!

I think PhD programs should skip all the rigamarole, visit an applicant's house, look at their books, ask them to design their dream home, and from there can probably tell whether they'll be accepted or not. You can't walk into a room in my house without books visible - they're stacked everywhere. We've run out of bookshelves, and that's saying something, because we have a bunch of those, too. Visitors sometimes seem rather intimidated - it's kind of funny.

The bonus is that my kids think this is normal and have good-sized book collections of their own (my 1000 book count doesn't include their books - they each have probably 50-100 books - one kid's 9 and the other is 3!). The most excited reactions I get from them is when I say we're going to either the bookstore or the library. They're going to be crazy academics too, I fear.

[Guest EC]

This won't help with the physical bookshelf part, but if you're a Mac user, take a look at Delicious Library: http://www.delicious-monster.com/ . It has a cute checkout function, too, so if you do manage to figure out a nice way to organize your physical shelves, you could keep track of which books you're reading and which one's are "out".

[DespSeekPhd]

I just looked at that delicious library thing - that is really cool! That would have been especially helpful to me when I was a teacher, because it was a pain in the butt to keep track of all the classroom books my students borrowed. It almost - ALMOST - makes me want to get a Mac.

I said almost.

[philosophia]

Yes, that software does look fantastic. But I don't have a mac. Oh well.

Anyway, this is my plan:

I'm only dealing with my philosophy books, which makes this much easier. I made a few broad catagories (5-10) and labeled my bookshelves accordingly (2 or more shelves for some topics, 1/2 for others depending on how much I expect to focus on them.) Eventually I will use those catagories as the basis for my database, and I will create subdivisions within each and enter individual books. I'm also setting aside 2 shelves near my desk for whatever I'm working on at a given time, like a "reserve" shelf. I am going to obtain a large filing cabinet for articles -- which are currently all over in various folders and lacking any order at all, as well as consolidating all my pdf's into a single location.

In the database there will be a section for location (bookshelves, file cabinet, pdf, library books), catagory, notes, topics, comments, etc. I like this because I can always just use the general catagories to quickly add books, and it will be easy enough to find things without specific numbers for each book, but I can also add more information and subdivisions or specific numbers when I feel like I need them (or when I get a chance to do so). I'm also thinking of including books I've used from the library/ ILL, so I can remember what that book I used two years ago was called. Oh, and one more catagory for the database: whether and what I have read from a given text (unlike my father, I would like to avoid being one of those people who just buys lots of books he never reads.)

Anyway, this sounds horribly compulsive, and it probably is, but I think that in the long run it will pay off -- I've seen some of my professors looking around their offices saying: "I think I have a copy of that around here somewhere!" Beyond that, though, I like the idea that I will be able to do searches and come up with a list of relevant texts, even if I had forgotten that some of them existed. A notes section can be helpful for this, where you can note that this might be a good diss topic or something like that.

[theapplepicker]

Consider using Readerware ( http://www.readerware.com ) for your database. It's what I use, and I love it. I typed in all my ISBNs by hand, but it still didn't take that long. Plus, I was so entertained, watching the program find my titles on the Internet, that I enjoyed it.

You get to try it before you buy it, too.

I think there's a section for location in the database, too, but I'm on my computer at work and can't verify.

[DespSeekPhd]

I just looked at the readerware site, and they currently have free bar code readers if you order the software. So I would guess that would save you a lot of time.

[rising_star]

The most excited reactions I get from them is when I say we're going to either the bookstore or the library.

This was me as a child and may explain where I am now.

[neonmeatte]

It may sound odd, but I use iTunes for my PDFs. The quick search feature enables you to find anything very fast... The only downside is that I had to manually enter authors and article titles. Needless to say, it took quite a long time. But I don't regret it at all and in the long run, it has saved me a LOT of time.

[8in2009]

Try http://librarything.com/

It's good and the price is pretty reasonable.

[Dinali]

I think PhD programs should skip all the rigamarole, visit an applicant's house, look at their books, ask them to design their dream home

Something like this?

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

[wilderbeast]

You all need to learn to write in LaTeX!!

It's kind of a different approach to making documents. The idea is that you, as the author, should be more concerned with what you're writing then how to format it and make it "pretty". So you type your stuff in plain text and put in commands to tell the program how to format the page. It produces beautiful PDFs.

Now as for the original issue, this is more about how to catalogue books and academic articles for citations, but there is another program related to LaTeX called Bibtex. You can make a single electronic database of all the stuff you own. Then when you go to write papers, etc. in LaTeX and want to cite something, all you have to do is type a single line \cite{so and so} and it does it for you. This is great - you don't have to make new bibliographies for each document, you just tell the program what references to include and where to put them, and it does all the rest!!! You can have a massive database of every citation you will ever need. Then you use whichever ones out of it you want to, and never format anything.

Check it out, http://www.latex-project.org/ and http://www.bibtex.org/. There's a little bit of a learning curve because you have to pick up on what the various commands are, but it's soooo much nicer than typing anything in Word. It's big in science (easy to make nice mathematical documents), but I don't know how popular it is in the humanities...

[flit]

lots of great ideas to check out.... am looking forward to that

in the meantime though, I use the Ross plan to keep track of my books Ross would be my husband... he is very good at finding just the title I need.... even if he's never seen/read the book.... once in awhile, when he was having trouble finding something, I've got to google images and pulled up what the book actually looks like... but usually all he needs is a title

he also builds my bookshelves .... and is very handy at the library too .... LOL Not bad for a video guy turned pest control guy

[doctoraldude]

erm ... Any idea how i can archive ebooks and PDF journals? :?

[piccali]

Haha! It's kind of sad, really. My dream isn't to make a ton of money, or drive around in Italian sports cars; it's to have a nice big library in my house. One with bookshelves that match (and don't lean at twenty degree angles), and a whole bunch of good books. I've got the books area halfway covered, but the rest of it might be a few years.

I can't wait to have built-in bookshelves in my house!

[Jeppe]

Something like this?

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

That is so awesome. I want one of those when I become an internet billionaire.

[mfm]

I use Readerware (and have for about 4 years) for my library. I put the LCCN in one of the User fields, export and print labels for the books on a periodic basis. The books are shelved by LCCN (current title count is 2889). The :Cuecat scanner is easy to use and helps. You can also import your Amazon purchases directly by dragging the web address to the target in Readerware which is nice.

However, I would also HIGHLY recommend Endnote - (if you can only do one or the other get Endnote - student versions range from $80-120). While not as handy for managing the library as Readerware - it is essential for managing references (and automatically formats your footnotes and bibliography based on the style you tell it to use). When you are writing and go back and insert or delete a reference, it automatically adjusts all the other footnotes. I can't imagine writing a term paper without it, let alone a dissertation!

[natofone]

http://www.zotero.org/

Free and amazing!

[britlitgrl583]

I second Zotero for organizing (and collecting) PDFs. They seem to be marketing it specifically to academics, so it's designed to work with things like jstor. A few potential problems to note, though: It's a firefox add-on, so if you use any other browser you'll need to switch (a transition that was more difficult than it should have been for me). It also can be confusing at times. I still don't know how to delete something I've saved or how to remove it from a folder. But all in all it's by far the best free option out there right now!

[doctoraldude]

thanks nato n britlit !

[bibliophile23]

I can't wait to have built-in bookshelves in my house!

I'm with you guys! I fantasize about a library with one of those attached sliding ladders.

[erudite crudite]

i love love love papers! i think it's mac only, but their iphone app is awesome.

http://mekentosj.com/papers/

[belevitt]

Maintaining journal articles had been the bane of my existence for years. I would have stacks of articles covering every square inch of my desk and half a dozen different failed filing systems in cabinets in several different spots. Recently, I found a website called labmeeting.com that was excellent and has literally transformed my work space and organizational habits. You need to be invited to join the service for free, but it is worth the hassle. You can get an invite here-

http://www.phdcomics.com/proceedings/vi ... hp?t=12081

If you are in the biomedical sciences, this is a game changer.