Should I open a library

Been spending the last couple weeks cataloging the personal library. Something I’ve been wanting to do for years and occasionally actually started but never continued with. Lets face it data entry is boring as hell but with time on my hands I decided to use such time to start practice working with Access, when I thought I might still be able to reenter the IT world, and to try and get a listing of my books as I lose track of what I have at times. I also hope to use it as a stepping stone to inventorying all items of value in the house in case of disaster striking the premises. My movie collection is almost as big as my book one though not as valuable. Need to design some new tables and forms for that though,

Always been a reader and discovered the world of paperbacks in a big way in my high school years. Still have a lot of those books around, though a number of them wound up destroyed during a move back home after college. In college I discovered that hardbacks last longer and book club editions weren’t that expensive. Somewhere along the line though I started collecting and found out that book club editions or BCE as they can be termed don’t really have much value except as reading material, so I moved into acquiring American first editions of the authors I liked, mainly in sf and mystery. All this is to explain the cataloging job. One, I have a lot of books and two, I need to keep track because I don’t really need to spend money on copies of something that is already in the collection or, if I am going to buy another copy, to make sure it is an upgrade to the one I have. Hence my brand new database and my project.

So far I’ve entered 380 books and haven’t really even started on the shelves yet. These are the ones just lying around in the den or the living room or wherever. The bedroom has yielded over 100 volumes alone. When the weather breaks and allows me to enter and sort through my shed I know there are 3-4 Rubbermaid containers out there containing paperbacks. Ever since the debacle of my return from college I no longer use cardboard to store books. Looking at some of the prices my old paperbacks from back in my high school days are fetching these days (no remarks about sheer age adding to the value either) that episode cost me a pretty penny in investment value in addition to the reading material. Not that I ever thought in terms of paperbacks becoming worth money. Just found that out as I was cataloging and decided to see what it would take to replace some missing volumes in the series I once collected. Found one sf/fantasy series I used to read in high school and college selling for $800 to $1000 for the complete 26 book set in firsts. This for a bunch of paperbacks that cost from $.75 to $2.95 when they came out. Guess what I’m sitting on? Yup, all 26 of them, first printings and most in mint condition. Problem is can I bear to part with them? Collectors just hate to sell unless it’s a duplicate copy of something.

Another reason for the cataloging is that I have been thinking of opening up an e store dealing in books. As I’m not going to be able to return to work in the foreseeable future, if ever, I’m going to need something to give me some income so it’s either enhance my poker skills tremendously or think of something else. Since books and computers are the things I know best the e store seems to be the path to investigate. Anyone with any knowledge or insights to this endeavor please feel free to comment. Any and all advice highly appreciated. We’ll see how this works out. Actually owning a bookstore always had been a dream of mine but in those days it was the B&M type. Who knows, there is still a chance. Would love to have something to pass on to my daughter as her love of books rivals mine.

Speaking of books and my daughter, I was digging around in an old magazine rack last night and came across a book whose disappearance has puzzled me for at least 10 years. It’s a copy of H. Beam Piper’s The Fuzzy Papers that I got through the Science Fiction Book Club way back in my college years. I have always enjoyed Piper’s work and I went looking for this one way back when. It interested me at the time as it works on many levels. It’s a nice, good read which is the main thing. Piper was a good story teller and his tales are good even if you don’t like material with messages in them. It can be cute enough for kids, in fact I think they have brought out an illustrated kid’s version of the story. I mean with a character called Little Fuzzy with all its connotations how can it not appeal to kids? This is the reason I went searching for it years ago. I came across the dust jacket lying in a drawer and thought that it would have been an interesting story to read to my daughter when she was younger. I went searching, figuring that book had to be somewhere but never could find it even though I would go looking every couple of months. Finally it works on the adult level of being a story involving an issue that might not be exactly black and white and that how one sees something may depend entirely on where one is standing and how shifting one’s viewpoint can help understand where the other guy is coming from and possibly reach an accord with them rather than bashing each other’s brains out. Daughter is now too old to sit in my lap and have me read to her but hopefully she’ll read and enjoy it on her own now that I’ve unearthed it. Now I just have to figure out where I put the damned dust jacket.

Well we’ve gotten wordy as usual but we have nothing but time on our hands these days so it don’t bother me and hope it doesn’t bother you either. Of course if it does you’ll probably just ignore me anyway. Enjoy or not but Thanks for the visit