Play Book Tag discussion

I have been using BYRON Reference for inventorying my book collection and recording my reading data. It's outlook is sketchy and I may need to move to something else.
What do you use, for what and how stable is the system?

I post mine over on The StroryGraph. I have been using it for a few years now. It is just to post my books to have a fall back.

I shall prove that I am REALLY old. Two three ring binders. One for year by year - one for authors. Really easy, alphabetical. Year by year is date, title of book, author. This way, I keep a running total of what I read this year. Other is alphabetical - author's name at top, title of book read, year I read it. This year I have read 69 books so far. I did not have a smart phone or computer when I started this. peace, janz

Around the year 2000, I tried to write down every book I could remember reading in a spiral notebook and then I kept adding to it. Currently, I have a sturdier 5x8 spiral notebook that I got as a Secret Santa gift about 20 years ago. I just put the title & author on one line so it's still not full. At the beginning I had 40 books a year but that kept increasing. I used to put a code next to them like M for mystery, R for romance, etc. but I haven't bothered to do that for a while.

I don't use any other tools than GR - except that I keep a spreadsheet of Audible books, because there was a rumor some time back that the online library might not stay available, or if I leave my membership maybe I couldn't see it. None of that happened, but it is handy because of course I can't physically see the books and I have a lot of backlog.

Many already know I'm active over on LibraryThing, as well. Other than that, I have Word and Excel documents. :-)

I keep an Excel Spreadsheet.

My only real tracking is here on GR, and mostly only since 2018. It in no way shows all the books i have.

I do back it up from time to time on Storygraph by exporting from GR to Storygraph, which is somewhat used by my IRL Book Club much younger members, and they just sith there. I just don't have it in me on any level to 'learn' another platform. So Storygraph is my library backup for GR. And not packed up that often either.

My only real tracking is here on GR, and mostly only since 2018. It in no way shows all the books i have.

I do back it up from time to time on Storygraph by exporting from GR to Storygraph, which is somewhat used by my IRL Book Club much younger members, and they just sith there. I just don't have it in me on any level to 'learn' another platform. So Storygraph is my library backup for GR. And not packed up that often either.

I duplicate everything I do here on LibraryThing. I don't catalog all of my owned books, but when I post something here I make a private note of the source when I post a review . I do something similar on LibraryThing.

I try to update that info if I donate an owned book, or return an audio, or acquire a different edition in another format. But that doesn't always happen. I'm not sure why I bother because I rarely look at that information.

I just fell in love with StoryGraph!!!

Peacejanz wrote: "I shall prove that I am REALLY old. Two three ring binders. One for year by year - one for authors. Really easy, alphabetical. Year by year is date, title of book, author. This way, I keep a runnin..."

This was me also, from when I was a child. My mother recorded her reading in a set of binders. It was by author with 1 or more pages for each author. She used lists in the front of books to find the lists of books they wrote to fill in the pages and know what books to look for. There was a separate list for pseudonyms referring to which names an author might be listed under. She gave a check mark if she owned it and a date if she read it. She also put a rating 1-5 for each book. Then she had notebook that chronologically listed all the books she read. I think I started my notebooks when I was about 10, before that I just had a list of what I read. I think I went back and filled those lists into the notebooks. What can I say!!

I pretty much just use Goodreads. I've recorded some on Book bub and storygraph, but don't do it often.
I was doing it on my computer in the early oughts but 2 computer crashes wiped that out, so had to recreate from memory.
I have 2 card catalogues from late '80s to mid '90s that I recorded my books and I've pretty much transferred them over to Goodreads except for all the trashy romances (one of the catalogues is devoted to them.)

LibraryCin wrote: "Many already know I'm active over on LibraryThing, as well. Other than that, I have Word and Excel documents. :-)"

I'll add that my tbr is up to date on LT, but not here on GR. With the tagmash searches, it's much nicer over there to find things to match a tag I'm looking for. Like someone else mentioned (I only recently started doing this), I've started leaving a note to myself (on LT) when I add to the tbr where I heard of the book/why I added it.

Linda C wrote: "There was a separate list for pseudonyms referring to which names an author might be listed under. ..."

Was your mom a librarian? If not, I feel like she would have been a good one!? :-) This is authority control. Pick one name to put all the books by the same person under.

Booknblues wrote: "...for all the trashy romances (one of the catalogues is devoted to them. ..."


OOOOOOOH! When I get myself to California and we meet up, I fully expect to be given a tour of that trashy romance catalogue!

I of course have multiple trashy romance shelves and towers.... print and ebook. And a separate one that is just Christmas trashy romances. Then there are the cozy mysteries.

Theresa wrote: "Booknblues wrote: "...for all the trashy romances (one of the catalogues is devoted to them. ..."


OOOOOOOH! When I get myself to California and we meet up, I fully expect to be given a tour of th..."

These are books I read in the 80s and 90s, so Johanna Lindsey, Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood and writers of the era.

LibraryCin wrote: "Linda C wrote: "There was a separate list for pseudonyms referring to which names an author might be listed under. ..."

Was your mom a librarian? If not, I feel like she would have been a good one..."

She was not, but I was. She was a prolific reader. She belonged to a Book of the Month Club and got books through the mail for years by subscribing for the free books and then buying the minimum required and then dropping the subscription until another offer. (there was little extra money). Our town did not have a library. My mother did not drive. While the 6 of us kids were in school we all brought home our limit of books from the school library and she read them all, no matter what grade we were in or subject we picked. When I went to college, I would shop used book stores and book sales, read the books and then take the finished books home to her. I never went home without a bag of books until the day she couldn't hold a book or her eyes became 'left neglected' and she couldn't see the left third of a page and the books made no sense. By then there were memory problems also so books were no more. But she read a LOT of books during her life.

Just did an export from GR to LT. Not everything seems to have gotten there (number of books don't match) so I'll have to do some playing around and see how things work. Many of the book covers didn't transfer and there is a list of isbns that don't match. So I'll have to see how much effort I want to put into getting things included. I'll have to add info in 3 places for a while and then re-evaluate.

I used to join Book of the Month, Literary Guild and Doubleday, get the minimum, quit and later join another. That's how I read some big bestsellers like Roots. I would buy the minimum and quit. BOTM was the most literary, in spite of the name Literary Guild was medium and Doubleday had more romances and chick lit. And there was the Paperback Book Club, which I think was owned by BOTM, actually some of the others probably were too. Around the year 2000, Paperback changed so that there were no requirements. I stuck with them for a while.

Linda C wrote: "Just did an export from GR to LT. Not everything seems to have gotten there (number of books don't match) so I'll have to do some playing around and see how things work. Many of the book covers did..."

I'm LibraryCin there, too, if you want to "friend" me. Feel free to message me with questions. It's a HUGE site. Not as many images and such as here, but so much information there, and things you can do.

Thanks, I'll do that

I'm also on Library Thing and duplicate my list there. And, I keep Excel spreadhseets for my TBR and books read. I sort them by fiction, mystery, nonfiction, biography/memoir.

When my first Excel spreadsheet got too long, I started a new one, listing the year it began in its title. And then a third one. And now I'm on my 4th iteration (began 2023).

I DO try to go through at least once a year to weed out those I'm no longer really interest in reading.

Oh, and I have a separate spreadsheet for series books.

Tessa, question on Excel for you.
Background - The important thing on the BYRON site that is nowhere else, is a user field that I use to tell me where the book is located in my house. I don't think that's possible on GR or LT.
I did a sort for books on 1 small bookcase, made a file using a feature on BYRON that used notepad, saved to desktop and did some editing to get author last name, first name/initial, title - in comma format then loaded it into Excel. All this worked fine.

Question - when it downloaded into excel it gave the sheet the name Office (which is what I named the file) then next to it is a second page which is designated as Sheet 1 - is this correctly done? If I want to do another book location file and download it to the second slot how do I make sure it goes there? Open the Sheet 1 blank page and it will automatically go there since it is open? or do I need to designate it somehow? And why is Office the first but the second one is called Sheet 1, shouldn't it be Sheet 2?
Only thing I have ever done in excel is fill in data to grids already set up. So think of me as learner level when you answer. If I need to go through the whole excel tutorial to move forward with this don't hesitate to tell me so.

Linda C wrote: "Tessa, question on Excel for you...."

First, I have to say that my husband probably regrets teaching me Excel.

That said, Linda, I'm not sure how to answer your question about why a document downloaded into Excel would show a second sheet with name of "Sheet 1" Nor do I know how it will work if you download yet another file into the same Excel file. I don't ever do that, but rather build my own spreadsheets. I have occasionally copy/pasted a sheet from one file into a different file as I'm reorganizing my system.

But all this is just one excel file into another excel file.

You certainly want to name the FILE something that makes sense in your organization of files and that you will remember and be easily able to use. SEPARATELY, you can rename any of the sheets however you want. RIGHT click on the tab that says "Sheet 1" (Or "office" or whatever) and you get a pop-up window. One of the commands in that pop-up is "Rename" Click that and name the sheet whatever you want.

So, for example, I have a file I call "books Owned"; the sheets are "By title" "By author" "By Location" "Given away" (Only the Given away sheet has unique info; the other three have identical info, each organized differently.)

Secondly, let's say you have four sheets open and named however you want to name them. If you LEFT click on a sheet tab, AND HOLD YOUR FINGER DOWN ... you can then drag that tab to left or right to re-order the tabs however you want.

I hope that helped a little.

Thanks for the info. Glad to know I'm not the only one mystified by the sheet names. Once I get my next file ready, I'll see what happens when I download. If it works, I'll continue, so I have an inventory with location for my books separate from the BYRON database.

I'm going to continue to use the database as long as it runs but I need that location info to find my books. I have thousands and am not interested in typing them in individually.

For anyone using StoryGraph, I've just started an account there and would love to add friends to my community. I'm muggs33 there.

Just started it this morning but already having some fun with the graphs and stats there.

I use my phone - lol! Very low tech!

Jen wrote: "For anyone using StoryGraph, I've just started an account there and would love to add friends to my community. I'm muggs33 there.

Just started it this morning but already having some fun with the ..."

Just sent a friend request.

Other platforms sound intriguing, but with 4000 books read, 500 owned but not read and at least 500 Want to Read, there is no way I'm transferring all that! When I joined GR in 2011, I added books gradually from a paper list I had. I still do keep a paper list in a notebook, but all it has is title and author.

Robin P wrote: "Other platforms sound intriguing, but with 4000 books read, 500 owned but not read and at least 500 Want to Read, there is no way I'm transferring all that! When I joined GR in 2011, I added books ..."

StoryGraph allows you to import your Goodreads information and makes it very easy. The information is 100% correct but very close.

I import it over occasionally just to look at the stats.