On Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:49:05 -0400 "H.S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dijo:
> John Jason Jordan wrote: > > And that brings me to my motivations. One purpose is just to keep track > > of what I have. A few months ago I ordered a book I needed for a class, > > only to discover after it arrived that I already had a copy. That was > > stupid. Please don't tell the university, lest they revoke the degree > > they already gave me. > > For this purpose, I think Koha would been appropriate. It is being used > by many libraries to maintain their repository of books. In your case, I > strongly suggest you give it a try. Koha gives you many tools to manage > and search your books library. It can also talk to other libraries to > import the book's identification information (MARC21 record?). I am sure > there are other tools to manage a library, but I liked Koha since it is > free, open source, standards complaint and is being actively developed. > > Koha can be administered via a web browser from any computer as long as > the Koha server you install on is also connected to the internet. > > BTW, what OS and computer setup are you using? This is Ubuntu Hardy x86_64. Regarding Koha, again I am afraid I failed to give adequate information. I practically never lend books. If I do, it is to a colleague or professor, and if I never get it back that is fine. I have no need to keep track of lending information. I am not a library. I also do not need the same information about a book that a library would need. Library software would be absolutely wrong for my needs. Really I just need to be able to keep track of what I have so I don't order a book that I already own. That means being able to search my list based on title or author. Any simple tool can do that. A simple database in Base would handle that. My biggest need is to create citations and reference lists for term papers. To enter a couple dozen books into Zotero took me 15 minutes once I figured out enough about Zotero to do it. To enter my entire collection into Zotero would take probably twenty or thirty hours. And I don't have to do it all at once; I can do it one bookcase at a time as time permits. In fact, of the entire collection I need only a few hundred for my current academic interest (linguistics). The remainder of the collection are business, math, economics, finance, law, psychology, and a ton of novels in several languages. My interests are fairly eclectic. For now I'm going to keep working with Zotero to see if I can get it to do the references and citations correctly. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
