We brought a lot of books to Singapore. We got rid of a lot of books before we left too. I'd guess there were about 8 boxes of just books shipped, likely more. We bought a bunch of IKEA waist height shelving here, and our black IKEA cube desk was shipped to Singapore by sea. That's 48 cubes. Although I need a few for board games, paper and our homeschooling folders.

Jonathan and I have always wanted to catalogue our books so we finally did. We are actually recording the official Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) number (like libraries use) for each of our books and are filing our entire household library by it.

To catalogue the books we are using the app Libib. There's even a free version. You scan the barcode on your books with your phone camera, and it automatically enters them into your "Library". You can then use the search function to look up your books. We haven't entered Tags yet, so it's only search by title or author at the moment. We've got 4 libraries happening, and all your libraries can be searched at once. Here's what we've got so far:

  • Non-Fiction (Adult) Books: 178, Size: 18 cubes.
  • Fiction (Adult) Books: TBD
  • Children's Books: 185 (57 uncatalogued), Size: 8 cubes.  
  • Youth Books (e.g., Novels): TBD
Non-Fiction: The Cataloguing and shelving in progress.

Both Ms.C and Ms.E enjoyed scanning in the children's books with the iPhone, while I looked up and recorded the DDC numbers via the laptop. I swore I wasn't going to use the DDC number with kids books, but in the end I did. Although, I did compromise by filing the board books by colour instead, because Ms.E pulls those out all day long.

We will see how long these filing system work with the kids. I saw Ms.C putting books back according to their number in the afternoon, and I've placed a large basket atop their bookshelf for books to be re-shelved. I've never seen Ms.E or Ms.I actually put a book back on the shelf, just take them out, so this may work. Once all the books are shelved we'll keep our basket of puppets up top, and I'll pull out feature books for the top.

Our children's library:The books on top still need their DDC numbers before they can be shelved.

Our progress:

Day 1: 178 books; Time estimate: 2 people, 4 hours each = 8 hours total.

Day 2: 185 books; Time estimate: 1.25 people, 3.5 hours (less than Day 1 because I didn't record the DDC for all the board books, the kids are part of that total) = 11.5 hours cumulative total.

Day 3: TBD.

I think we are 1/2 to 2/3 done the books, although it's hard to tell, because paperbacks are so much smaller in size than most of our Non-Fiction books. I'll try to do another post of our completed libraries at a later date.

I could become addicted to this. I may start cataloguing our board games, our art supplies, who knows what's next.