Well, yesterday I started a new project. Anyone who knows me, knows I love a project. In fact, I have about twenty or thirty in my head to start, already started, or left abandoned at any one time! My husband laments the latter….just yesterday he was complaining about my unfinished landscaping project in our back yard, how very dare. 😉
How’s My Project Coming Along??
Anywho. I love organizing things so a lot of my projects revolve around that. Now, my books are pretty well organized already. Those that are shelved are sorted by 
Fiction>Genre>Alphabetical by Author and Nonfiction>Subject. With the exception of a ‘classics’ shelf in my living room. And my giant TBR pile on my book cart and endtable overflow (it’s bad, y’all). I also have a catalog of all my physical books on librarything.com. I’ll admit that because I have so many books (2,265 at last count) that catalog has become a little unweildy. I really need to go through and update the tags and also pull down the data into an excel and do a thorough match up/inventory–I have taken a few out of my library and may have forgotten to remove them from the catalog and there may be a couple I forgot to add, etc. It’s fairly accurate, but I’d like it to be 100% at some point….. because I’m me and I need things to be perfect, hahaha ….. O.O
Okay, straying off course again. Remember that giant TBR pile I was mentioning? Well, that’s only some of my actual TBR. For a long time I’ve been accumulating books faster than I can read them and a lot of them are actually shelved and not in a ‘tbr’ pile. I think this is something that many bookworms can relate to. Anyway, I have been thinking about this for a while now and I came up with a way to tackle this massive TBR. And the first step involves coming up a with an accurate list. Right now I am looking to find out the exact number of books I have in my TBR pile–whether they are physical books, ebooks, or audiobooks–if they’re unread and I own them, I want them on a list. And thus, the great cataloguing project was born!
I could use librarything since I’m already there. But again, not sure how accurate it is and because it’s ALL books and not just my SpecFic books (which is my main concern, as the bulk of my TBR) it’s just not a good fit for what I have in mind. After doing minimal research I decided to check out Libib. It’s not fantastic, but it will serve for my purpose and I like that I can scan books into it (unlike, say, a straight excel sheet, as much as I do love spreadsheets). I also like that you can export the data. I’ve created a SpecFic libray and have begun the process of adding my SpecFic books to it, marking them either complete, not started, or in progress. (One of the things I do like about Libib is that it’s easy to update status of books and also tags.)
Some of you might remember my book cart—where books go to rest and are seldom heard from again, apparently.
So far I’ve added all my ebooks and the books in my living room book cart and end table TBR. Next up, audiobooks. Then finally I will tackle the five book cases of SpecFic books upstairs. That will NOT all be getting done this weekend as I have other commitments (we have company tomorrow for book club and gaming so I have to clean my house and buy food) but I do feel like it’s something I can get done over the next week or two. Either way, I’d like to have this list by December as it’s going to play a heavy role in my reading plans and goals for 2020 (she says mysteriously).
Have any of you used Libib before? How do you organize your books, or your TBR? Would love to have other ideas as well. Leave a note in the comments, would love to chat!
Way Too Fantasy 
Thanks for letting me know about Libib. I am about to do the major book sorting in me hold. I have no idea about all the books I actually own and have needed to make a major catalog since forever. This might be the perfect tool for that.
x The Captain
Hope you find it useful!
This is such a clever idea! Best of luck with your cataloging!!
Thanks, Kaya!
I’m boring… my TBR is just done by date… Oh, and random impulse buys:)
Hah. Mine is too big so it’s just become unmanageable lol. 🙂
I use Goodreads for the most part, though more to organize what I’ve already read. I really need to use it to help remind me about my kindle purchases, they tend to disappear from memory because they aren’t staring at me every day like my physical books!
Yeah I use goodreads to track my reading and also note books to be on the lookout for when I’m shopping haha. One of the reasons I’m doing this is to help put those digital purchases in my face. When I was going through there were so many I had forgotten about!
love this x
Thanks!
I used Libib for a while, but it got annoying as it can’t always scan stuff (especially if you have special/exclusive editions from subscription boxes or old books). I just use an excel spreadsheet. It was tedious to begin with (Even though I don’t get own quite 2000 of them), manually adding all the books, but now I just add them as soon as I get them, so it’s manageable.
Yeah, I have had to manually add a few things but for me it’s easier to add a few then having to add everything because I just have so many….😅
Excel is great and I use it alot for other book related stuff. Maybe once I get all the data and extract it into an excel I’ll just keep using that. Not sure yet.
I use goodreads, but I don’t have proper shelves and I’m so unorganized. This is such a good idea, Lisa. I just love your book cart btw. ❤
Yeah I don’t really have many good organized shelves on goodreads either. I use it mainly for tracking my reading and books I want to read (whether I own them or not). Thanks!
Good luck with the organization! As for how I organize my library, er…lol, I wish comments would allow gifs so I could insert that Leslie Nielson Naked Gun meme “Nothing to see here!”
Thanks!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Awesome post!! Thank you so much for mentioning Libib, it looks very sleek and similar to an app I liked years ago called Delicious Library that is pretty much defunct now. Super glad to find a web-based alternative, though Goodreads has been working pretty well for me lately.
I like a lot about goodreads but I just use it for a different purpose and don’t really like it for cataloging for some reason lol. Had never heard of delicious library. It seems there are quite a few library apps out there now, libib seemed like one that was used a lot so thought I’d give it a whirl. We’ll see how it goes!
This sounds like you: https://xkcd.com/1906/ and me too haha. I also have a TBR cart where books go and never leave 😂😂 Good luck with your project! It sounds like a lot of work but it will be worth it!
LOL that is spot on, yes hahahahahahaha. Thanks! 🙂
Oooh, I am going to check out Libib out! I am putting off working on my owned TBR (I build a spreadsheet, are we surprised? lol)… but I have so much shame just LOOKING at my shelves, I don’t even want to quantify it lmao
It’s not even the shelves for me, I can ignore those easier because they’re, well, put away neatly lol. It’s the immense pile of overflow in my living room. And then realizing that is the tip of the iceberg. The pile won’t let me ignore the shelves any longer lol!
Organising my books, mmm, let me see, no. It just doesn’t happen, I’m bloody useless. I wish you all the best with this project.
Lynn 😀
Organizing is like a stress relief for me so organizing book stuff is just extra fun for me I’m weird LOL
Thanks!
I love those kind of projects! 😀 Anything about organizing books and I’ll get excited.
I catalog my books as well. It helps me to keep track of them and avoid buying the same thing twice. Libib is good. I’ve used it before, but I use Book Collectorz (collectorz.com) to organize my books. You can enter up to 100 books for free but have to pay for the app after that. I did because I thought it was worth it. You can scan books in as well and tag them and easily add books that probably don’t have an ISBN or shows up in the system and add links (like your review links). I like it.
Oooh that sounds like an amazing app. I might have to check into that one at some point if I decide I don’t like Libib, but it’s working okay for me atm.
Yeah, love these kind of projects myself, anything organizing really lol.
I cataloged my books in 2016 and wrote a post about it, it was a good while ago but I will still do the same when I repeat the process now in 2020.
https://leticiatoraci.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/five-things-i-found-out-when-i-catalogued-my-books/