Cataloguing My Library

Last week, I shared how I had spent some time reorganizing my bookshelves. I included lots of pictures, if you are interested in checking out that post.

Once I was done with that project, I realized I wasn't quite finished with what I wanted to do with my books. Two years ago for Christmas, my in-laws gave me a four-drawer card catalogue. It's been a wonderful decoration in my library since then, but I was ready to make it useful.

So I catalogued my library.

I created a spreadsheet with four categories:​

• Fiction - Read
• Fiction - Unread
  
• Nonfiction - Read
  
• Nonfiction - Unread
  

Then I had my amazing husband use his fancy knowledge of Microsoft Office to turn my spreadsheet into a set of alphabetized note cards for each category.

And once they were all printed out (which took a surprisingly long time), I put them in my card catalogue! The left side is for fiction, the top drawer being my read books and the bottom being my unread books. The right side is for nonfiction. My goal is to move all of the cards from the bottom drawers into the top, although I know that's going to be pretty much unachievable, since I'm sure I'll be adding new books to them.

And in case you're curious (and because I love data), here are the categories as they stood when I completed printing on February 12.

• Fiction - Read - 351 books
• Fiction - Unread - 269 books
• Nonfiction - Read - 106 books
• Nonfiction - Unread - 253 books

That means that I have a total of 979 books. I have read 56% of the fiction books and 30% of the nonfiction books. Over all, I've read 47% of my books. I was really hoping it would turn out to be at least more than 50% read, but now I have my first goal to aim for!

Have you ever catalogued your books in any way? I'd love to hear about your method!