Thursday, February 01, 2007

LibraryThing to the rescue

Before our house was on the historical society's tour of homes, one of the things we did to prepare for visitors was to remove several hundred books and eight book cases from the house. As we packed the books into boxes and crates, I recorded them on LibraryThing thinking it would save me time later when I started cataloging our library again. We stored the books in the garage and in the old smokehouse/kitchen.

After the tour (which was December 9th), we brought the bookcases back inside and put the books back on them. I noticed we were missing quite a few Dick Francis books, so I asked the children to go back to the storage buildings and look again. They found a few more boxes of books, but not the ones by Francis. As the weeks passed, I'd send a child or two out to look again. We searched Steve's office. We searched all cupboards and closets in the house. I even asked the girls to look inside their hope chests, but we didn't find those books.

One day Jacy told me she'd found some Dick Francis books in a milk crate, covered with some stuff belonging to Marley. Jacy said that she'd shelved the books with the other Francis books, and would I like to come check and see if that was all of them?

I went upstairs, looked at the Dick Francis books, and said, "That's not all of them. We're still missing some. About 10 or 12. Keep looking."

A few more weeks pass, and by now I'm so tired of not finding the books, that I've offered a reward - $15 to whoever finds the missing Dick Francis books. This sparks a frenzied search by the younger set, while the older ones roll their eyes and say that every place has been searched, there are no other places to look - and at least one mutters that she already found the books, shelved them, and showed me.

I remember that I catalogued those books on LibraryThing. It will help us if I can see what titles we need to look for, right? Or at least count the number catalogued and compare it to the number on the shelf. (I do believe that I can do arithmetic - I even do pretty well at higher math - but I can count... I think.)

Marley goes upstairs to count the books while I tube up LibraryThing to see what Dick Francis novels we're supposed to have. Marley comes back and says, "Thirty-one." And LibraryThing shows us to have.... 30. Ooops. Time for me to apologize and ask for forgiveness.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Dana in Georgia said...

Just signed up for LibraryThing today. We'll see how I do entering all our volumes. I did discover that we have several in common (no surprise), but one title has just two *owners* - you and me :) It's St Elmo by Augusta Jane Evans. I admit to reading only part of it, hoping to complete the story one day.
Dana in GA
PS DD#3 is a big Dick Francis fan.

4:49 PM  
Blogger Laura said...

I read that book back in 1997. Several years later I found an old copy at a library booksale and bought it, but I don't know that I'll ever reread it. I was thinking my daughters might enjoy reading it someday.

DD#3 apparently has good taste. She's in good company anyway, as my godly grandmother loved his books and read and reread them dozens of times. This collection I have was hers, and I'm just now reading through it.

5:11 PM  

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