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 1^st 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 1^st 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.