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Bibliophile

Screen shot 2010-02-07 at 12.29.03.png As a part of the general sort of the study I have been cataloguing my library. Once upon a time this would have been a major undertaking, but now with the benefit of a hand scanner and Bookpedia (thanks to the twitterverse for helping make that choice) its become a lot easier! I'm only half way through the process and have barely touched the science fiction collection yet. That may be harder as many books predate ISBN codes.

For those interested here is the list of books that I consider to have been critical in the whole body of my work. If you order via the CE link we earn some money! I should say now that the list is not exhaustive, I still have some shelves to catalogue, and presence on the list is not endorsement of the ideas contained in each volume. Several go back to the 70s and my Catholic Marxist days, there are two volumes of poetry and a fair amount of philosophy. Note that there is only one knowledge management book and that I don't necessarily recommend. It's there because it triggered me to look into complexity via its use (incorrect I now think) of autopoiesis. Working Knowledge from Prusak and Davenport is a classic here, and while talking with Larry had a great influence over the years (and I may publish that list of people one of these days), the book summarised a field which I was familiar with. You may also notice the more or less complete absence of any popular management books!

It's a fairly eclectic mix but my criteria was any book I had read twice, or which I picked up and referenced frequently. I have also loaded them to Library Thing but not really set that up for social sharing yet. If you want to see the list of books which may get added to the list, then my planned reading list is here.

Comments (4)

Steve [TypeKey Profile Page]:

I'm going through a similar exercise, although my needs prioritize a catalogue of articles (as pdf's and annotated hard copies) from newspapers, magazines and journals--as well as books.

I'm finding Mendeley to be be a great tool. It's an online/offline bibliography and citation manager that parses documents and does its best to match titles the way CDDB recognizes music or cardscan reads business cards. You can also look up titles on google scholar, citulike, or Amazon and import those references too.

I also recently invested a small fortune in Ikea's Billy bookcases (currently celebrating 30th anniversary) and covering them with glass doors has made this whole exercise a lot less phlegmatic.

Steve Holt:

I used your example to get me back to cataloging my library using Bookpedia, which I'd started last year. I checked and found that there's been a recent upgrade and loaded that and then made the disappointing discovery that due to a dispute with Amazon Bookpedia no longer syncs with its iPhone, iPod touch equivalent, Pocketpedia. One of the key advantages to me was having a list of my library in my pocket to help me avoid buying copies of books I already own. I've got my fingers crossed that they can (eventually) resolve this. In the meantime, a discussion of the matter AND WORKAROUNDS can be found here: http://bruji.com/articles Especially note the one "Getting Around Without Pocketpedia." The good news is that you can get a list of your books into the iPhone/Touch, it just isn't quite as simple and elegant as Pocketpedia.

Dave Snowden [TypeKey Profile Page]:

Bookpedia has an export to an iPod option that creates a note which is a good enough

Mike Sivertsen:

"All My Books" is recommended for those on the PC platform.

http://www.bolidesoft.com/allmybooks.html

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