Updating My Library

I have a library app that I use to keep track of my books. (I use Libib, FYI) Or I am supposed to use it to keep track of my books. I knew there were some I hadn’t gotten entered into it, so I decided to go through my print and ebooks and make a list of the ones I hadn’t entered. Wow. It turns out, I am really, really BAD at putting new books in there, and at marking the ones I have read. That means when I am looking for a new book to read, I am missing a whole lot of books I have bought. I spent a good part of last week adding and updating my library. I am pretty sure I have everything in fiction done. I have a few reference books to get in there but those are generally not casual reading material, so I wasn’t too worried about them right now. They will get in there.

It looks like, as of the end of last week, I have about 800 books in the app. Not as many as some people, but I decided a long time ago that I was not going to keep every book I bring in. I keep some favorite authors, some series I enjoy, some classics, and generally any book I enjoyed reading. If it was not one I liked all that much, I put it in the pile to be given away (I use paperbackswap for most of those).

That does not mean I have piles of books all over the place. A lot of those are ebooks, so they exist on various platforms or my hard drive. Some will say it’s risky to think of ebooks as “mine” because if, for example, Amazon decided I was a bad person and kicked me out, that could potentially mean I’d lose all those ebooks. If the platform will allow downloading of ebooks, I will and then store that on my own computer. Of course, Amazon does not (not surprising). But, for me, I paid for the book, so I add it in. And there are collections of books that I did not add individually. I put in the collection as one ientity.

I also discovered that I was not very consistent in how I edited titles (sometimes the title that is grabbed from the ISBN search is a bit confusing or has extra stuff added and needs a bit of editing.) And tags are a mess! For some, I have no idea what I was thinking! So, I’ve been going through everything and trying to make some sort of sense out of it. I am going to try to be better at adding books from now on. *Fingers Crossed*

It’s been a project, but a good one to keep me occupied during these frigid days we’ve been having. If you are experiencing this cold, snowy weather, try to stay warm! Spring is coming, or at least that’s what I am told!