Cataloguing small library

Hi Katy,

I would strongly advise against making a card catalog. Frankly, it's a pain in the behind to set up - imagine writing out cards for 500+ books by hand - and to  maintain. All cataloging is done electronically these days, although there may be a few holdouts...!

Could you buy or borrow a tablet, if you don't want to spend much on a computer? You could use it to access LibraryThing or Goodreads once you get an internet signal. Many people like LibraryThing, but I never really got into it; I find Goodreads much easier to use. Both are free.

The benefit of using one of those sites is that the books are already cataloged, so to speak. All you have to do is input them into your library's account on the site. In case someone not physically present in the library wants to browse your collection, you will have it available online for free. Then you can make a "checked out" tag and assign books to it and take them out of it as necessary. You can assign multiple tags to each book (="bookshelves" on Goodreads) for browsing by subject. It's kind of a pain to input all your books, but it sure beats writing it out by hand, and maintenance is far easier.

On Goodreads, for easy input, I recommend searching by ISBN (the 9- or 13-digit number that generally starts 978...). There are often multiple editions of books, and ISBNs are an easy way to find the one that YOU have. 

One final note - you will have a catalog of books after doing all this, but it's not technically cataloging. Cataloging is the description and analysis of books, and other types of resources, according to rigorous standards. These standards make it possible to cut down on a great deal of work for libraries, because if the catalog records were all created according to the same rules, then we can take advantage of the work already done by others and share them between libraries with minimum difficulty. It can also greatly reduce confusion on the library users' part. There's nothing wrong at all with making catalogs that don't use the standards, of course! Lots of small libraries do this. But I just wanted to point out that it's not quite the same thing.

Hope it works out for you! If you feel like you need a handbook or something, these may be helpful: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=su%3ASmall+libraries+Administration+Handbooks%2C+manuals%2C+etc.&qt=hot_subject 

Disclaimer: I'm a relatively new librarian who knows what she's doing with cataloging but not with library start-ups.

Best,
Laurel

Laurel Narizny
Metadata Librarian at Caltech
626-395-6431  | narizny_at_library.caltech.edu
California Institute of Technology
1200 E California Boulevard, Mail code 1-32
Pasadena, CA 91125-3200




-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Subscribe NGC4LIB Katy Eliz
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2014 2:55 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Cataloguing small library

Hey folks, 

I am trying to determine the best way to catalogue a little library at our Montessori school and was wondering if you all had any guidance. I'd say we have no more than 500 books. We are keeping them in our conference room which, try as we might to make it, does not pick up an internet signal, nor do we have a computer back there, but could get one somewhere down the line. So I was thinking of card cataloguing them. Guidance on how to do this would be great!

Because cataloguing is something I can't imagine wanting to do twice, I was thinking we might as well do an electronic catalogue at the same time in case sometime down the road, we expand or find a way to go digital. Does anyone have suggestions for ways to electronically catalogue? I know about Library Thing and was wondering about the pros and cons of that as well as of other free or cheap systems. 

Any other general tips about tiny library-starting would be much appreciated as I'm not a librarian.

Thanks!
Katy