My subset of the Library of Congress
October 1, 2010 7:32 PM   Subscribe

I'd like to put a personal library of around 200 books in order by the Library of Congress Classification System. I plan to take them off my shelves then scan all of their ISBNs for inclusion on LibraryThing... Then what? How do I get LCC numbers from ISBN numbers for ordering/labeling? How should I label them?

FWIW, I own an inkjet printer.
posted by phrontist to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
How old are your books, many include the Call Number on the verso page, the page after the title page with other cataloging information, and where you'd likely look for the ISBN in the first place.
posted by dipolemoment at 7:39 PM on October 1, 2010


LibraryThing will probably recognize all of your books if they have ISBNs, and the details pages for them will include the LC numbers. LibraryThing searches hundreds of libraries around the world to find details and grabs LC and Dewey numbers. The Cataloging-in-Publication data on the title page verso is the easiest place to find LC numbers, and most new North American books have that. You can always search the Library of Congres catalogue yourself, too.

As for labelling, I did it by hand with Avery 02207 labels. They look fine. You could always use a label template, though. If you get dust jacket protectors from Brodart or a similar library supplies company then your books will look all the nicer, and you can tape the labels on.
posted by wdenton at 7:49 PM on October 1, 2010


Response by poster: Oddly, the export option doesn't seem to return LCC numbers, but they can be seen in the details view.
posted by phrontist at 7:52 PM on October 1, 2010


Best answer: LibraryThing puts books into your library by matching the provided info (like the ISBN) against a data source (amazon, libraries, the library of congress), grabbing all the fields from the record found in that data source (title, author, LCC, etc.) and then using those fields to make a LibraryThing record.

When you enter your books, use a reputable library (LoC, even!) as the data source (the Search Where? bit in the Add Books page). Amazon does not track LCC numbers, so if you use that as a source, your books will not have that info.

Once your books are in, complete with LCC, edit your view style to include LCC numbers, sort by LCC, and shelve accordingly.
posted by zamboni at 8:01 PM on October 1, 2010


You can also look at worldcat.org for the loc number, and I also have used openlibrary.org but they don't have the range of books that worldcat does.

In one of the school libraries I worked at I used a ptouch labeler for labeling my books. It was quick and easy.
posted by momochan at 3:45 AM on October 2, 2010


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