The hard part of organizing our library was inventorying our assets. The tedious task of entering ISBN or Library of Congress numbers into a spreadsheet or database - and author-title information where such information is not available can be daunting. Using Library Thing as an online resource simplified matters considerably, especially with the use of a hand scanner: enter or scan the ISBN and Libray Thing fills in the rest of the information. It is even possible to upload a spreadsheet file of scanned or manually added information.
Library Thing draws information from other selected libraries to complete the task of cataloguing, with the added feature of being able to download a .csv file of the library for use in a spreadsheet or database.
This is extremely valuable in filing an insurance claim in the event of loss or damage. Plus, there is an online record of the library holdings, which can be shared with church members and the local community.
Now that we have a list of library holdings, we can then work on the tasks of labelling them and setting them in order.
