Wednesday, May 6, 2009

The Library Catalogue

Cataloguing is most vital for a well maintained library. Even without knowing the meaning of words like catalogue, ISBN etc, we (me, my bro and sis) have been maintaining a long register copy since 1992, in which we used to write down each and every name of books that graces our home with a unique identifiable number. I leveraged the practice in a more efficient way and extended the same to study reference books and all the magazines during my October’08 visit home.

That was a four day marathon of work (40% of my week-long vacation) with my sis-Moina and cousin-Moni. They helped me with the tough job of identifying all the books with a unique number, classifying them into different categories and sub-categories, recording relevant info for each book like language, author name and finally placing the books in the almirah and rack with the particular shelf matching with particular categories of books.

One of the main intention was to get the all the information into computer (in excel format), so that these can be used later by the library management software or to make the catalogue online (Long term plan!!).

Two quick disclaimers here:

1. This lists only the books on 1st Jan, 2009. There are a good number of additions after that.

2. There were around 350 books (on that day) still available which I could not catalogue because of various reasons. This number has increased a lot by now.

Things I am looking forward with the catalogue:

1. Create a balance between reader’s preference and the different categories of books available. Procurement of new books will be impacted by this.

2. Make it online so that can be accessible by anyone easily.

3. Keep the resource statistics up-to-date

Here below, I give detailed information on the different types of books that we had by 1st January, 2009. There are seven broad classes of books which in turn have different sub-classes. This is just to give an idea about the resources in the library

Main Categories

Sub-Category

Total Number

Yet to be categorised

Total

350

Children

Article

5

Biography

38

Novel

29

Drama

5

Folk Tales

23

Knowledge

21

History

5

Jokes

3

Poetry

6

Story

19

Tales

42

Total

196

Adults- Light Reading

Biography

11

Drama

17

Novel

70

Poetry

15

Short-story

23

Translated Novel

11

Total

147

Adults- Deep Reading

Advice

17

Article

41

History

2

Travel

4

Religious

20

Total

84

General Knowledge

Career

1

Cooking

3

Dictionary

13

Engineering

2

Essays

3

Grammar

9

Health

10

Knowledge

10

Language Learning Guides

4

Quiz

21

Total

76

Study Reference Books

Competitive Exam preparation book

35

Humanities

29

Language & Literature

27

Mathematics

31

Science

50

Total

172

Magazines-Adult Reading

Business

3

Competitive Exam

24

Current Affairs

8

Health

14

Jokes

12

Literature

35

Religious

6

School/College Magazines

34

Souvenir

47

Sports

1

Others

3

Total

187

Magazines-Children

General

110

Tales

34

Science

9

Total

153

This is just a beginning. This library will achieve new milestones going forward in case of the number of resources.Currently, I am working on number of ways to get new resources to the library.

Any help/book-donation/feedback/suggestion from readers is welcome.

1 comment:

  1. tammam be manjit da...ki kom aaru..i might ask ur help one day...

    ReplyDelete