The Terror of Knowing

Just a (hopefully) short one from me today folks. I recently came across a couple of Booktube videos discussing the ways in which you can catalogue your own personal library or collection of books and the benefits of doing so, specifically Rachel at Kalanadi’s video on ‘Tracking Your Library’. I must admit – this is something I’ve tried (and failed) to do in the past. I used Libib for a while and dutifully scanned my books but then I proceeded to do absolutely nothing at all with that list – I still have the app on my phone and I’m sure I could do something with it if I wanted to but I’ve lost the motivation to do so using that interface.

Enter: Emma watches Rachel’s video and discovers LibraryThing exists.

Again, it’s ostensibly yet another app equipped with a barcode scanner so you can quickly catalogue your book collection in one place under one account name. However, even on first glance, it has much more in-depth features which mean you are definitely cataloguing your books as opposed to just recording them by scanning their ISBNs. This deeply appeals to the nerdy side of me that likes being able to manipulate a data set to filter books of a certain genre or books of a certain page count etc. etc. Plus there’s definitely some satisfaction to be found in getting into a groove scanning barcodes and hearing that pleasing beep as each thing scans successfully.

It’s safe to say that once I return to Liverpool (I’m currently back at my parents’ house for a few days) I will be pulling my books off the shelves in order to catalogue them. Yes, I’m a nerd like that. Also I would really like to have a handily accessible list of my books on my phone somewhere so that I can be 100% sure when I’m browsing a used book shop that that book I’m about to impulsively buy isn’t already in my collection. (Please tell me you’ve also done this?!)

Don’t worry, this post isn’t sponsored by Libib or LibraryThing – it just got me thinking about how (and indeed even if) you readers out there catalogue your book collection in any particular way. Do you have an app for it? Do you use Goodreads’ bookshelves function to its full potential? Do you like to make your own spreadsheet? Do you prefer the ol’ analogue approach of a pen to paper list? Please do let me know in the comments because I’m genuinely quite nerdily interested in hearing about this from my lovely fellow readers!

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