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Saturday, June 25, 2011

What To Do With All Our Books?

The house has been in need of freshening up - you know trim that is nicked, or marked up, furniture in the same condition.  It just needs a fresh coat of paint.

There are many different areas that need this but this evening, taking advantage of the kids swimming at my parents house again, I painted the hallway trim, Kyle's closet trim, my desk, bookcase and armoire.  They all have been given a fresh coat of a soft white. 


Doing this has lead me to see the need for more bookcases, and some organization of stuff.  We have way too much stuff.  And many, many books.  Speaking of books, I have been researching home library programs for the computer, such as BookCAT. 
Do you use a computer program to catalog your books and other media?
www.allposters.com
 
I have a huge problem - I love to loan out our books, movies, homeschool materials - we are always happy to help someone out. The problem is that I cannot always remember who I have loaned things to etc.  I would love to be able to use a program like BookCAT that would use a barcode scanner to log in all the books we have and then I could check books in and out - it would also send and email to the person who borrowed it when the agreed upon time is almost up!  Love that!


This is a lovely problem to have, but it is one that must be solved soon!



8 comments:

Becky K. said...

Is that something we could use at the church too?

Anonymous said...

What will they think of next, I wonder! What an amazing idea - just like Ed's bookstore job - and then he would come home to have to apply the same principles here. Too fun! Yes - sorting through our books is on the list this summer. Ed's actually taking a week off to put our basement library, props, and costume storage facility in order with me. Yard sale forthcoming. Re-arranging of space. Perhaps this home library program to look into, too!
Thanks for the tip!
Joy!
Miss Kathy

no spring chicken said...

I've never even heard of such a thing but I think it sounds great. I'll just wait and see what you come up with... ;)

Blessings, Debbie

Vee said...

"The Rabe Library" certainly has a lovely ring.

I organize books in a completely different way. There are eight bookcases in this house. There will be no more. When the bookcase is filled, something must go and I don't mean on the floor.

My beloved has other ideas about books as you read today. Oh my! A four-volume leatherbound Bible commentary by John Brown
(1896)was his prize today. The librarian practically begged him to take it. (She didn't charge him a cent.) What are we going to do with it? It was Mr. Brown's lifetime work. I think it would be Mr. Vee's lifetime work to read it. Maybe they would make a nice stack to use as an end table...

Unknown said...

Never knew there was home library systems! How cool is that. You should tell mom about this!
It's good to know. Thanks for sharing- I'll keep this in mind for when we start homeschooling.

The Pennington Point said...

Cool! This is a problem for us also. Just yesterday we were looking for some books that we realized we loaned out last summer and never got back. I don't really mind other people having them, but not spending an hour looking for them would have been nice. Lisa~

Gina said...

I started keeping a list of books that I lent out, so that I know where they are. I too have way to many books to keep track of them all. But I love to share and I find when I write it down, I'm more willing to lend.
Gina

Manuela@A Cultivated Nest said...

How cool! I don't have a catalog of media and so far I don't lend out so many books that I don't know who has what.

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