Combining collections; a process query

Greetings,

Has anybody had the experience of combining one or more large
collections of books together? I've been tiptoeing around this project
all winter, but I'm going to have to tackle it in the next few weeks.

I have my own books, and two largish, inherited, collections to join
together; in all this is about six thousand volumes. On one hand it is
a happy prospect; I packed all these books so, in theory, I know
what's in the cases. However I'm sure to discover things I didn't
realize I had. From time to time I have opened a box or two to check
on them and I have always come up with happy "finds".

That's the fun part. The daunting prospect is the sheer grunt work of
getting all these books out of their boxes and squared away.

Has anyone experience with this kind of project and any thoughts on
how to make it an easier task? (A yard sale is not an option!)

The more I think about it, the more issues seem to appear. For
instance, none of these collections has an inventory, not even, I'm
ashamed to say, my own. Would inventory-making be a starting point? If
I did that would I just temporarily return the books to their boxes?
Or should I wait and make an inventory after I'm done unpacking?

Does anyone have a suggested order of march for a program of
inspection and cleaning and BJC-ing of the new books before shelving
them? Or would it be more efficient to do that after organizing the
shelves?

Also, if I may ask, what is meant by "double-shelving", which I saw
referred in a thread about book shelves. Does that mean two ranks of
books on one shelf, with one row in front of another? Does the
darkness and lack of air circulation for the books in the back row
lead to m*** problems?

Finally, I feel a little trepidation about asking this, but is there
any acceptable method to mark the books to indicate where they came
from? Since the inherited books came from two different sources, I
would like to be able to tell which was which. For books with djs, I
thought I could slip a small acid-free tag inside the BJC with the
info. But books without dj's are a problem. Would a small penciled
notation be OK? Many of the non-dj books are mid-19th c and are among
the most valuable I have. I thought of laying in an acid-free label,
but if it slipped out ..... The urge to label is mostly laying up
insurance against old-age brain dimming and to help my eventual
executors. There's something about inheriting books collected by
several generations of keen book lovers that gets one thinking about
the proportions and span of human life.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions and experiences you could
share.

Thanks!
Nancy

Also, if I may ask, what is meant by "double-shelving", which I saw
referred in a thread about book shelves. Does that mean two ranks of
books on one shelf, with one row in front of another?

Yes.

Does the
darkness and lack of air circulation for the books in the back row
lead to m*** problems?

I never had that problem and my collection has always been double shelved.


--
Bob Finnan
The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page
http://users.arczip.com/fwdixon
New & Out Of Print Books, Books-On-Tape, Videos, DVDs, CD-ROMs For Sale
http://users.arczip.com/fwdixon/hbsale.htm
To reply: replace nospam with fwdixon
.................................................. ....................

(bookkeeper) wrote in message . com...
Greetings,

Has anybody had the experience of combining one or more large
collections of books together? I've been tiptoeing around this project
all winter, but I'm going to have to tackle it in the next few weeks.

I have my own books, and two largish, inherited, collections to join
together; in all this is about six thousand volumes. On one hand it is
a happy prospect; I packed all these books so, in theory, I know
what's in the cases. However I'm sure to discover things I didn't
realize I had. From time to time I have opened a box or two to check
on them and I have always come up with happy "finds".

snip

I would first prepare an electronic inventory using any one of many
available programs. Some programs allow you to enter the ISBN
number(manual or scan)to gather all other data from internet sources.
Believe me, this is a great advantage over typing in the name of the
publisher, author, etc for each entry.
Then I would apply dust jacket covers and worry about shelving.

Art Layton
Stamford CT

"Hardy-Boys.net" wrote in message ...

snip

Does the
darkness and lack of air circulation for the books in the back row
lead to m*** problems?

I never had that problem and my collection has always been double shelved.

Hello Bob,

Thank you for your reply to the double shelving question. Am I correct
that your books are double shelved with the spines of both rows facing
outward? Or are your double shelves accessible from two sides (like
library stacks)?

May I ask how deep are your shelves? Do you have mixed sizes of books
in a row? My stuff varies a lot in width, so I figured that I'd need
20 inches, plus an inter-row interval and back space, to allow for the
chance that two 4tos lined up with each other. Still, even with
deeper shelves, having two rows of books would save wall-run length
and double my potential shelf capacity..... a very attractive
possibility.

Is there anything special about the books you decide to place in the
back row?

Nancy

I have been having a similar experience. Between my books and those
inherited from my mother I have about 6000 books, too. The 47 or so
bookcases for these books are scattered all over three floors of my
home, and, of course, the bookcases are of all different sizes. I found
it very useful to have them on shelves to begin with. It makes finding
them easier.


While Art Layton's suggestion to make a computerized catalogue of all
the books first is probably most time efficient in the long run (if you
note as well where to find each book in its starting position), I
approached the task from the other end, and it has taken the better part
of a year and a half and I still have about 10% of the way to go. I
have had a huge amount of fun along the way, however, finding books by
the same author in bookcases in different rooms and floors and gathering
them together, sometimes having to do google searches to learn about an
author. [Recent example, I found my mother had five books by Frances
Hodgson Burnett, and I had no idea who she was. It turns out she
invented "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and managed by 1910 to be married
twice and divorced twice, quite a feat for those times.]


I first decided that to make the collection meaningful to me, I wanted
to organize the literature by country and by time. So, for instance, I
have a very large bookcase containing English literature with Beowulf in
the upper left corner and Harry Potter in the lower right corner.
American literature ended up in numerous bookcases on two floors, and
this necessitated grouping of books. So, I have one area of 19th C.
books up to the start of WWI. Then another grouping from WWI to WWII,
another from the end of WWII to the Vietnam War, and finally a
post-Vietnam grouping. Such groupings of authors try to focus on the
period in which they "flourished" or "flowered" as the Victorians would say.


My method required me to maintain a "working bookcase" where I gathered
books for sorting. Sometimes, I would find a book or two by an author
and know that I saw more of that author's work somewhere around the
house. So they would sit on one of the shelves while I ran down the
other(s). The working bookcase is about 18 shelves and will probably
house language and reference books when I am finished. The problem of
efficient use of bookcase space still dogs me, even this late in the
task, as I occasionally move books of one type to a temporary location,
so as to rearrange the shelving patterns. Soon, this will be done with
the Children's Books to make room for the ever expanding English
literature section.


One last thought. I did use the sorting process to eliminate duplicates
and inferior editions into "to be sold" boxes. That has eliminated
about 400 books from the collection.


Francis A. Miniter


bookkeeper wrote:

Greetings,

Has anybody had the experience of combining one or more large
collections of books together? I've been tiptoeing around this project
all winter, but I'm going to have to tackle it in the next few weeks.

I have my own books, and two largish, inherited, collections to join
together; in all this is about six thousand volumes. On one hand it is
a happy prospect; I packed all these books so, in theory, I know
what's in the cases. However I'm sure to discover things I didn't
realize I had. From time to time I have opened a box or two to check
on them and I have always come up with happy "finds".

That's the fun part. The daunting prospect is the sheer grunt work of
getting all these books out of their boxes and squared away.

Has anyone experience with this kind of project and any thoughts on
how to make it an easier task? (A yard sale is not an option!)

The more I think about it, the more issues seem to appear. For
instance, none of these collections has an inventory, not even, I'm
ashamed to say, my own. Would inventory-making be a starting point? If
I did that would I just temporarily return the books to their boxes?
Or should I wait and make an inventory after I'm done unpacking?

Does anyone have a suggested order of march for a program of
inspection and cleaning and BJC-ing of the new books before shelving
them? Or would it be more efficient to do that after organizing the
shelves?

Also, if I may ask, what is meant by "double-shelving", which I saw
referred in a thread about book shelves. Does that mean two ranks of
books on one shelf, with one row in front of another? Does the
darkness and lack of air circulation for the books in the back row
lead to m*** problems?

Finally, I feel a little trepidation about asking this, but is there
any acceptable method to mark the books to indicate where they came
from? Since the inherited books came from two different sources, I
would like to be able to tell which was which. For books with djs, I
thought I could slip a small acid-free tag inside the BJC with the
info. But books without dj's are a problem. Would a small penciled
notation be OK? Many of the non-dj books are mid-19th c and are among
the most valuable I have. I thought of laying in an acid-free label,
but if it slipped out ..... The urge to label is mostly laying up
insurance against old-age brain dimming and to help my eventual
executors. There's something about inheriting books collected by
several generations of keen book lovers that gets one thinking about
the proportions and span of human life.

I would be very grateful for any suggestions and experiences you could
share.

Thanks!
Nancy

"bookkeeper" wrote
Thank you for your reply to the double shelving question. Am I correct
that your books are double shelved with the spines of both rows facing
outward?

Yes.

May I ask how deep are your shelves?

Most are about 12" deep.

Do you have mixed sizes of books in a row?

I collect juvenile series books which are all pretty much the same size
(12mo).

Is there anything special about the books you decide to place in the back
row?

Yep, the nicer looking books go in the front row ;-)
--
Bob Finnan
The Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page
http://users.arczip.com/fwdixon
New & Out Of Print Books, Books-On-Tape, Videos, DVDs, CD-ROMs For Sale
http://users.arczip.com/fwdixon/hbsale.htm
To reply: replace nospam with fwdixon
.................................................. ....................

On 16 Mar 2004 11:52:57 -0800, (bookkeeper)
declared:

The more I think about it, the more issues seem to appear. For
instance, none of these collections has an inventory, not even, I'm
ashamed to say, my own. Would inventory-making be a starting point? If
I did that would I just temporarily return the books to their boxes?
Or should I wait and make an inventory after I'm done unpacking?

in a perfect world i would enter the books into a program as they were
unpacked, then brodart and shelve them.



Finally, I feel a little trepidation about asking this, but is there
any acceptable method to mark the books to indicate where they came
from? Since the inherited books came from two different sources, I
would like to be able to tell which was which. For books with djs, I
thought I could slip a small acid-free tag inside the BJC with the
info. But books without dj's are a problem. Would a small penciled
notation be OK? Many of the non-dj books are mid-19th c and are among
the most valuable I have. I thought of laying in an acid-free label,
but if it slipped out ..... The urge to label is mostly laying up
insurance against old-age brain dimming and to help my eventual
executors. There's something about inheriting books collected by
several generations of keen book lovers that gets one thinking about
the proportions and span of human life.

i would use a slightly blunt pencil on the ffp, writing lighly as to
not leave an impression.


Robert

The sound of gunfire, off in the distance, I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto, I've lived all over this town
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around

Finally, I feel a little trepidation about asking this, but is there
any acceptable method to mark the books to indicate where they came
from? Since the inherited books came from two different sources, I
would like to be able to tell which was which. For books with djs, I
thought I could slip a small acid-free tag inside the BJC with the
info. But books without dj's are a problem. Would a small penciled
notation be OK? Many of the non-dj books are mid-19th c and are among
the most valuable I have. I thought of laying in an acid-free label,
but if it slipped out ..... The urge to label is mostly laying up
insurance against old-age brain dimming and to help my eventual
executors. There's something about inheriting books collected by
several generations of keen book lovers that gets one thinking about
the proportions and span of human life.

Maybe you can use your cataloguing software to make note of whose collection
each book came from. Not as visceral as having the notation right there on the
book, but not as invasive as writing in the book, especially for older, more
valuable books.

But, it's your collection! Sometimes I think we get too wrapped up in the
whole "after I'm gone" aspect of preserving a book's value. I personally think
a previous owner's bookplate or neatly penned name on the ffp add something to
the charm of an older book. And some of the bookplates are really cool!

Regards,
Rachel Wright

Many books that cost thousands have antiquarian book dealer notations written
neatly in pencil...
I am inclined to agree that a previous owners tasteful markings add character.
One book I have is hilarious! A period gunsmith practically shouts his
disapproval at one comment or another on almost every page! The charm made me
buy it immediately!
I asked a descendent of Charles Dickens that was performing locally to sign one
of my first editions... he declined. He said that it would devalue the book
-according to antiquarian dealers he consulted in the past. It would have
helped me remember his first name!