Ancestry Magazine

If your home library is ever-expanding and maybe even ever-disorganized, consider the uses of the latest software.

You’re grazing at your favorite used bookstore and you come across a dog-eared copy of a 1917 yearbook for St. Swizzlestick’s Academy for Industrious Youth. You’ve been tracking various ancestors through St. Swizzlestick’s for years now. But do you already have this yearbook in your personal library? Should you buy it now or would that make two copies on your shelves?

Genealogists collect books like squirrels collect nuts. Books seem to expand in our homes and fill all the available space. At some critical mass, our personal libraries overwhelm our ability to remember all the books we own. Since there is no such thing as too many books, the answer to this dilemma is not to reduce our libraries but to move our list of personal book holdings from our memories to our computers.

Web Catalog
Computer software is the key to this transformation. Readerware software (see www.readerware.com) provides database software ready-made for cataloging a home library. For under $100, you can have an off-the-shelf database to easily catalog your personal library. The Readerware database records a book’s author, publisher, copyright date, number of pages, and more. The software will record whether the book is signed by the author, whether it is a first edition, and whether or not you’ve read it. Book dimensions, format (hard cover, paperback, etc.), category, location, estimated value, keywords you wish to label the book’s entry with, and any comments about the book you might wish to record are also available for entry into Reade rware. (Readerware also sells a version of the same software that can inventory your audio CDs, DVDs, and video tapes.)

Populating all this book information by hand can be a quite a chore. The point where Readerware outshines other library databases is its ability to automatically cull information about the book from the Internet, based on the book’s International Standard Book Number (ISBN).

First, you need to select which book-oriented websites Readerware should search. Readerware is programmed to search about twenty sites for ISBN matches. The more websites you ask Readerware to search, the longer the search will take. When Readerware finds a match, it imports that book’s information from the website into the database. This Web Catalog feature uses ISBNs for its search, but there are two methods to enter the ISBN. You may type in the number directly or use a handheld scanner to read the book’s bar code. One of the flashy features of Readerware is its ability to download a small thumbnail graphic of the book’s cover, if available.

Individual Data Screen for a Single Book
It did take a bit of effort to get our home library scanned in initially. About seventy-five percent of the more than 2,500 books in our library had ISBNs on them and perhaps half of those were bar coded. The task of scanning an existing library is an ideal one for a young person in need of extra pocket money.

Using the Web Catalog feature is most helpful with books that have been published relatively recently. Very old books that aren’t found in used bookstores very often (remember many of these websites sell used books as well) can be hard to match using Web Catalog. In addition, books that are so new that they have yet to appear online are also difficult to match.

Scanning for the ISBN
Bar code readers cost under $100 and it’s easy to program them to read the correct bar coding formats. You simply determine which bar code format you need the reader to decode (EAN 13+5 bar code format to read the ISBN bar codes and UPC-A bar code format to read audio CDs, DVDs, and videotapes), find the appropriate page in the user’s manual, and scan the sequence of bar codes provided in the manual to program the reader. It certainly beats setting operating parameters the old-fashioned way.

Handheld scanners shoot a low-powered laser at a bar code. The laser’s light is reflected off the bar code’s white spaces (the black lines absorb the light) and is read by a photo diode in the scanner. The photo diode is transformed into an electrical signal and subsequently into digital code.

One trick to try when the barcode won’t scan and the ISBN number is rejected: search a bookseller’s website such as Amazon.com and try to find the seller’s product code for that book rather than its ISBN. By entering the product code and having the Web Catalog function search the seller’s site, you are more likely to get a match from Readerware.

For example, a standard book link on Amazon.com would appear as http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1401600220/. The ten digit number 1401600220 is Amazon.com’s product code for that book (which also happens to be the book’s ISBN).

In the case of VHS tapes for sale at Amazon.com, a link would appear as http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6304441673/. Here, the ten-digit number 6304441673 is the product number. Entering either 1401600220 into Readerware or 6304441673 into the Readerware version for videos and instructing it to search at Amazon will provide a successful match.

The Smell of Old Books
Not every book has a bar code on it. For that matter, not every book is modern enough to sport an ISBN. ISBNs are ten-digit numbers that id entify individual iterations of a published work. ISBNs have a check digit in them that allows an algorithm to determine whether or not they are valid. That’s why ISBNs are ideal for using with computers. The computer can double check to make sure that the ISBN is in the correct form and does not contain an error. The ISBN numbering system was designed in the late 1960s and international efforts are underway to increase the ten-digit number to a thirteen-digit number to provide for sufficient expansion of our many printed materials.

Books without ISBNs have to be manually entered into the Readerware database. Furthermore, books whose ISBNs are not found on book websites checked by Readerware also have to be entered by hand. This can be time-consuming, but it certainly is worth the effort when searching for a particular volume.

Searches within the database can be made on any data element captured by Readerware. I find that the Title search and the Author search are the most useful. The search feature accepts the use of wildcards; if you can’t remember if a book’s title contains “genealogy” or “genealogical” you can use “genealo*” as your search criteria to get the desired result.

Searching the Stacks
A useful feature of the Readerware database is the Location field. My family has bookshelves spread out around the entire house so finding a specific book can be a challenge. I also keep some books on a shelf in my off-site office. By manually including a place in the location field, you can easily locate the physical position of a book in your collection. Readerware allows you to keep track of who you’ve loaned books out to as well. The software will record to whom you loaned, when the loan was made, and when you expect the book to be returned.

One of Readerware’s best features is its portability. The Readerware database can be formatted and loaded onto your Personal Digital Assistant so you can carry your own library catalog with you. Several different PDA operating systems are supported. I’ve used the PDA version (with the database downloaded from my PC copy of Readerware) and found that it works okay, but the user interface needs some improvements. Having a list of your books in your pocket is perfect for those moments of doubt in a bookstore or in the vendor hall at a genealogical conference. Now you can answer the question: Do I have that book?

The Readerware software on your PC reminds you to make regular backups every time you close the program, and backing up your library catalog is always a good idea for home owners insurance purposes. An off-site copy of your Readerware database will allow you to begin reconstructing your library should it ever be lost in a disaster. Books that are cataloged into your Readerware database using the Web Catalog function will usually include retail price information. While not all books have this information available, this Estimated Value field does give you something to go on if you had to go out and repurchase your library.

Readerware successfully solves the problem of knowing what books you have in your personal library. If only it could ensure that they all get put back in the right place when they’re re-shelved!

Mark Howells mis-shelves his books at markhow@oz.net.