How I Built My Digital Library

I thrive on organisation and love to have things categorised and in lists. And anyone who knows me will know my obsession with books. Not just the act of reading itself but the collecting of physical books. I’ve tried to build a digital library numerous times before using apps like Goodreads and Storygraph. Or even using my trust todoist app to build out a library. But nothing felt right, and most importantly nothing felt accurate.

I’d seen a bunch of people on social media use scanners to scan all of their books. The idea of feeling like a librarian beeping a scanner at barcodes made me feel quite giddy (yes I am easily pleased). And this is where my research started on creating an accurate and fully fleshed out digital library.

How I used Libib to create my digital library

I did quite a bit of research into barcode scanners and how they integrated into apps. It seemed like most of the popular book apps (Goodreads and Storygraph) weren’t compatible, and a new app called Libib seemed to be the best option.

Libib is a library management web app where you can build libraries and databased of books, movies, board games, music etc. It caters for both individuals and their home catalogues, but also libraries, schools and organisations. The great thing about the app is all the tags and notes you can add to items.

For individuals the app is free, and I will admit the web based version is better than the app, in my opinion.

Using a book scanner to build the foundations

As I don’t have my own laptop (I use a mac mini for my personal use), I needed a barcode scanner that was fully wireless and could connect to my phone via bluetooth as this is how I would be building my library.

I fully expected a barcode scanner to be pricier, but the one I picked up was just £27.99.

But how did the scanner and Libib work together?!

Building my digital library

Connecting everything up seemed far simpler than I thought. I connected the scanner via bluetooth to my phone then opened up the Libib web browser on the ‘add new item’ page. Then I clicked in the box where you would usually type in a title or ISBN number and scanned.

It took a few seconds but after the satisfying beep of the scan it would populate in the app and instantly add. Then the next few hours of my life was a blur of pure enjoyment.

I did keep my eye on my phone to check each scan registered as I did find some books weren’t found (mainly special edition books). For these ones I made a note as I was going along so I could manually add them at the end.

And it really was as simple as this. Knowing I had physically scanned in every book (or manually added it if needed) meant I knew my list was 100% accurate with no gaps.

Labels and lists

The labelling and listing was almost as satisfying as scanning themselves. But this process I did batches of over a week to maintain my sanity.

For each and every book I went in and added a ‘status’ of either ‘not started’ or ‘read’. This way I could easily filter how many physical books I had to read (the number was slightly alarming).

But then I went in and added tags to quite a lot of books for easily filtering. I added a ‘series’ tag to any book in a series alongside, a tag of the series name such as ‘Throne of glass’ or ‘The Thursday murder club’. This way I can keep track of actually finishing series which is a big goal of mine.

The rest of the tags I added were ones I knew would be useful for filtering when I wanted to pick a particular type of book to read. Some of the ones I added include ‘Greek mythology’, ‘Christmas, ‘F1 Romance’ and ‘Graphic Novel’. I also added tags for special edition, signed and personalised books.

Basically anything you want to be able to filter by you can.

Keeping my digital library up-to-date

From the moment I set this all up my app was accurate, but each and every month books get added to the collection, books get read and status’ change.

So on the final day of every month I do a little admin section and do a few things:

1. I add in all the new books I added to my collection that month. I keep a list of this in my todoist app for book journal anyway so it’s pretty quick.
2. I change the status from ‘not started’ to ‘read’ for anything finished that month.
3. I add status for any books I got signed or personalised that month from book events.

At the exact moment I am writing this post I have 839 physical books in my digital library, so I’m not a million miles from having my own official library. And that doesn’t include any of Luke’s books or comics which I am going to scan through very soon.

Do you have a large collection of books? How do you catalogue what you own?