How do I efficiently compare my digital and print libraries.

I am looking for a way to compare my digital and print libraries so that I can reduce the number of physical books in my library.

Some of you might be thinking a book case full of books... In truth its more like 5000 titles.

I keep accumulating in both formats (Logos and Dead Tree).

I had an opportunity to get free books from one source (it was nearly unlimited, though sometimes lacking titles that caught my interest. I'd pick up a couple big boxes full, and take them to a book exchange, where I would get 2:1 credit towards new books. Didn't matter what I brought in, or took out - if I brought two books in, I could take one home for free. The exchange boasted that they sold 100,000lbs of books each weekend they were open.

I'd accumulate free books that no one wanted. Take them down, and swap them for commentary sets, books on theology, books by authors I had read, or read about. Books I wanted in Logos but couldn't afford. The only thing they didn't want was the left behind books *chuckle*. I even traded a couple of books that looked to be dated books from iceland on economics. May have been someones highschool mathbooks... For a nicont title... I loved trading up this way. I still have a box of maybe 20-30 duplicates. I need to find a way to (quickly) compare my print library with my digital one so I can further pare down my paper library.

I figure I picked up a couple thousand (maybe 4 or 5) titles free this way in the past two years.

Fortunately, I am not married... I converted a room in my house into a library and I have books stacked floor to ceiling in bookcases that surround my room, and fill the closet. Books in my bedroom, books in my livingroom. Books from bible college, books from seminary, books from my grandmother (she had been a church planter and had a couple commentary sets)... Not to mention books in Logos.

I think I need to stop buying and trading for books for a while.

I have and use Goodreads. But I don't know how to quickly import my logos titles into it. I've imported around a thousand regular books and still have thousands of regular books to go. I'm not excited by the prospect of manually importing another ~13k logos titles, nor do I like the idea of searching one title at a time across my logos library.

So the long and short of it is this: Is goodreads going to be the best tool for this? Is there an easy way to export my logos library titles into some format that goodreads can import (even by way of a third party application, even if it costs a bit)?

Faithlife - it might behoove you to make an app for this. You see, the more books I sell, the more money I have to spend on titles to feed Logos.

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Comments

Erwin Stull, Sr.

I think that the most laborious part will be getting your print library into some kind of standard database format, such as SQL. There are several experts or very knowledgeable friends here that may be able to direct or assist you on converting your Logos library into the standard database format. Once the two formats agree and can speak a common language, it will be fairly easy to create comparison reports.

Average Joe

Interesting predicament. I'm not sure I can help. I know that you can export your library to an excel spreadsheet, but I'm not sure how that would interact with goodreads. If there was a column in the Logos library view for ISBN numbers, that would probably make things easier, but that information does not appear to be there.

I'm interested to see what suggestions you receive. I also have many books. Probably less than half of what you have, though. I would like to cull the herd a bit, too.

JT (alabama24)

If you intent is to keep most of those books, I would suggest a database program of some sort... My personal suggestion? Keep what you think you would use most and donate/sell the rest.

I am probably like you, except that I am married and my wife puts the brakes on my book purchases. I like print books, but they aren't nearly as useful as books in my Logos library... It is very rare for me to purchase print books now. If for no other reason: If I don't KNOW it's there, it won't get used. I don't have the time or space to organize them, but even if I did it would in no way come close to being able to "accidentally" discover a book in Logos.

I just sold and donated hundreds of books. I spent hours 1) checking against my Logos library, 2) Deciding if I wanted to donate or sell and 3) looking up prices online. As we are hopefully making a move across town sometime this month, I didn't want to move them AGAIN for them to sit for another decade (or more)... Now to do the same with my movie collection...

Lee

I guess you do keep a good inventory of all the Dead Tree. If not I would put somework into a good system.

Couldn't you look into collections or maybe ask Logos for a list of all resources to date and then sort it using Excel or Numbers?

Lee

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760107#Comment_760107

I think that the most laborious part will be getting your print library into some kind of standard database format, such as SQL. There are several experts or very knowledgeable friends here that may be able to direct or assist you on converting your Logos library into the standard database format. Once the two formats agree and can speak a common language, it will be fairly easy to create comparison reports.

Indeed - thats why I was thinking Goodreads. Their database is extensive, it automatically imported hundreds of books I've bought through them, and there is a isbn scanner for quickly adding the books I own that were published in the last 20 or 30 years or so (so long as their is a barcode).

The rest I can manually enter.

However (as Joe mentioned) exporting to an excel spreadsheet has challenges of its own.

I've considered calibre - if I can get the titles all into calibre, there is a tool to export x# of titles at once into goodreads, and others for completing incomplete metadata (hopefully this would fill in the isbn).

I'm playing around with this right now, but haven't found something that works quite right yet.

Alabama it was your post in another thread that got me thinking in this direction again. I have entirely too many books. God may have me marry one day, and I suspect whomever she is probably wouldn't like living in a library. Though that really isn't a motivating factor at this point. I want to be a good steward of my resources, and books are resources. They also represent resources that can be recovered, or released to bless other people...

No sense hanging onto 6 copies of Kingdom Matrix

Floyd Johnson

Find a typewriter
Type in names and authors of all books
Cut into strips
Arrange alphabetical order on a table or desk
Compare to list generated by LOGOS
Compare to list generated by other Bible software programs you may use
Give excess print books to deserving seminary student

[:D]

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760132#Comment_760132

Find a typewriter

Type in names and authors of all books

Cut into strips

Arrange alphabetical order on a table or desk

Compare to list generated by LOGOS

Compare to list generated by other Bible software programs you may use

Give excess print books to deserving seminary student

Hmmmm.... *chuckle*

I was hoping for something that would cause fewer paper cuts

:):)

13k books results in about 800 pages of bibliography. Safe to say 5000 books would be in the 350-400 ballpark.

I suppose I could cut down a tree, mill some wood, and process it into paper...

On second thought...

edit: I was able to get all my books into Calibre using a plugin called "import book list". First I went to Logos, created a collection for "full library" with the following rule: Rating:>=0 . Then I created a bibliography, and instead of printing, i used the option "copy to clipboard". This took a relatively long time.

Then I installed the plugin into calibre. The plugin lets you paste from your clipboard and then builds an empty book based upon each entry on my clipboard. Clicked next a bunch of times... Now I'm waiting while it processes 13,000~ titles.

I can export all the books I've scanned into goodreads to a CSV, and then import that into Calibre using the same plugin.

Later I will see if I can find a plugin that will check for duplicates... I bet it exists.

Edit: here is my goodreads profile.

https://www.goodreads.com/jsschrstrcks

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760136#Comment_760136

well that caused calibre to crash. Guessing they weren't expecting that massive of an info dump.

May try again but with fewer titles at once.

Bruce Roth

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760136#Comment_760136

I have books in paper, Kindle and Logos format and it is difficult to remember where a given book is. What I have done is maintain a database on the ios platform. This involves extracting the lists of books from Logos and Kindle and manually inputting paper books.

The library app is Book Crawler. http://www.chiisai.com/j25/

They have a Mac app but I am not familiar with it.

I focus on the fields of Author, Title, Series, Publisher. I can also import the tags from Logos as I have tagged each resource.

The process takes a bit of text manipulation to clean up the data and delete fields as you bring in Logos data into the Book Crawler format.

For Logos, I use the Windows app, Logos Lib Reporter. This will take the database and extract it into a format that I can use in Excel.

For Kindle I found a process to copy the screen showing the list of books and using a text editor and regular expression clean up the data.

Paper books can be scanned using the isbn code or manually searching with title information.

The hassle is combining all this data into the format that Book Crawler uses, but it is doable. Once I have it created I can export that database and use that as a base and add new purchases from Logos and Kindle. Paper books can be scanned in as they come in.

If you want more detail, I could write something up. It helps me to quickly determine if I have a book and if it is on the shelf or in Logos or Kindle.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760146#Comment_760146

Definitely! would be quite interested in hearing your method.

In the mean time I'm going to go through my collections (every book in my logos library is in at least one collection) and try using the smaller sets of books and see how well my plan works before I sink a bunch more time into it.

Bruce Dunning

Fortunately, I am not married... I converted a room in my house into a library and I have books stacked floor to ceiling in bookcases that surround my room, and fill the closet. Books in my bedroom, books in my livingroom. Books from bible college, books from seminary, books from my grandmother (she had been a church planter and had a couple commentary sets)... Not to mention books in Logos.

I can see the advantage of not being married in your case. I'd love to see some photos of your rooms. I can only imagine what they look like. [:)]

As I have said in other threads I actually gave away almost 2,000 paper books which have been replaced by Logos. Eventually I'd love to have them all in Logos but I know that this will never been completely an option.

I look forward to hearing more about how you end up handling things.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760158#Comment_760158

So calibre may not be the answer. At least not directly from Logos into calibre. Logos copies the information to your clipboard one book to one field. The title, author and everything is in the same field.

So when imported into calibre its: "Author, title, book, publisher, place, year" all lumped together in the title field in calibre.

I told it to download the meta data for the books I've imported (~1100) and it took about a half hour. It only found 28 books, and 12 of those (journals as it happens) were wrong.

I'm out of time for now, but I'll revisit this again - perhaps tonight while watching tv.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760158#Comment_760158

I can see the advantage of not being married in your case. I'd love to see some photos of your rooms. I can only imagine what they look like.

As I have said in other threads I actually gave away almost 2,000 paper books which have been replaced by Logos. Eventually I'd love to have them all in Logos but I know that this will never been completely an option.

I look forward to hearing more about how you end up handling things.

Haha looks like a mess of books

But I can take some pictures.

Yeah I would love to be able to bless a seminarian with my excess. I've been blessed on a couple of occassions by others, and quite frequently by the Lord (especially in the realm of books). It would be nice to pass on - even if its just a fraction of my paper book library - some of that blessing!

Mark Barnes

I use LibraryThing. I've entered my print books manually (via the ISBN), and import my Logos books. There's an easy option where you can display your duplicates. They sell very cheap barcode scanners to help you with your print books (or you could import from Goodreads).

It's not foolproof. In particular, you'll often find that if you have 6 different volumes of a set with a very similar title, they'll appear as duplicates. But it's the quickest way I know.

Importing Logos books into LibraryThing takes a few steps. I can tell you those steps if you're interested.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760190#Comment_760190

Yes definitely!

I've encountered issues from Logos -> calibre and from Goodreads -> calibre.

My method isn't going to work like I'd hoped.

Doc B

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760136#Comment_760136

These first-world problems are tough.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760232#Comment_760232

I hear you there Doc B.

Its a blessing to have God's word in our language, much less 12k$ in bible software, and a house too small to contain all my books. Praise God for the time and place He has allowed us to be. We are incredibly blessed and yet we squander so much of it.

Kent

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760232#Comment_760232

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne-h7FTMZBk

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760237#Comment_760237

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne-h7FTMZBk

Hmm... So I could spend 300$ (200$ for the kit in the video, and 100$ or so for OCR that that can read jpg's) and in a mere (assuming an average length of 300 pages per book, and assuming I have exactly 3000 titles just to make the math easy) 900 (12 weeks of 40hrs a week book scanning) hours I could have ALL of my books as .doc files, and could then import them into logos as personal books.

*shudder*

this might be another death by papercut scenario :P

It is pretty awesome, and I DO have a couple books I can't find on amazon that were published long ago... I can see some value in scanning SOME of my books this way.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760190#Comment_760190

To export from Logos to GoodReads/LibraryThing on Windows:

Download and install SQLite Expert Personal, and run the program.
Open the catalog.db file (in ....\Logos\Data\{random}\LibraryCatalog
In the SQL tab, enter the SQL code below and click Execute.
Click somewhere in the resulting data, and press CTRL+A, then CTRL+C.
Paste the resulting data in Excel, and save as a CSV file.
Import the CSV file to GoodReads/LibraryThing.

Please note:

Test this before relying on it!
I'm not sure how LibraryThing or GoodReads handles multiple authors or publishers. Their import documentation is terrible. I think the answer is 'not very well', but it may be good enough. I've separated them with semi-colons.
I haven't tested this with GoodReads. It seems not to want the author name as Last, First, which might be a problem.
Again, I don't know how LibraryThing handles multiple tags. GoodReads separates them with a space, but that will cause a problem if you have multi-word tags.
I'm excluding datasets, journals and magazines. To add journals and magazines back in, replace 'text.monograph%' with 'text%'.

LibraryThing:

SELECT Title, Replace(Authors,char(9),'; ') AS Authors, PublicationDate as Date, Replace(UserTags,char(9),', ') AS Tags, Replace(Publishers,char(9),', ')||' ('||PublicationDate||')' AS 'Publication Info', UserRating as Rating FROM Records WHERE Type LIKE 'text.monograph%' ORDER BY TitleSortKey, AuthorsSortKey

GoodReads:

SELECT Title, Replace(Authors,char(9),'; ') AS Author, UserRating as 'My Rating', Replace(Publishers,char(9),'; ') AS Publisher, PublicationDate as 'Year Published', Replace(UserTags,char(9),' ') AS Bookshelves FROM Records WHERE Type LIKE 'text.monograph%' ORDER BY TitleSortKey, AuthorsSortKey

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760265#Comment_760265

This seems to not take into account journals? Not that I need them represented. Just trying to make sure I understand properly. By the way, thanks for all the help!!

EDIT:
good reads gives the error:

invalid byte sequence in UTF-8

Library thing only seems to recognize 1188 titles (and those I think are the titles from Goodreads).

Hmm...

Bruce Roth

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760342#Comment_760342

I am leaving town for a few days, but here is some steps.

Assumptions:

Running Windows
IOS devices
Acquire Book Crawler
Access to spreadsheet

I start with downloading a freeware app called Logos Library Reporter.

Here is a link to the discussion of it: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/85971.aspx?PageIndex=1

Here is the link to the web site: http://l4libreport.clark-tx.net/

Basically once you install the app you will see that it copies your Logos catalog and then builds reports from that. You can export them to a csv file that can then be imported into a spreadsheet program.

Book Crawler Website: http://www.chiisai.com/j25/

Book Crawler the ios and Mac app has the ability to export and import data. I create an export from the app and that results in a base spreadsheet for me to follow loading data. For Logos data I need to do some cleaning up of some of the records; in particular I don't need a record for each of the multiple copies of a journal. I will take the column that has tags and add a new one that is called 'Logos". (you could do that within Logos if you wanted). Then I carefully copy out the columns and insert them into the Book Crawler spreadsheet.

For Kindle books I do a similar process. I'll have to expand on that when I come back, but basically you would go to your Kindle page on the web and capture all the data on the screen and then run some steps to clean up the data so that you can copy that into the spreadsheet along with your Logos data.

For paper books you can enter them manually into the app as it will use the camera to scan the codes. That might take a while. If you have those books in some sort of library tool you should be able to export that and merge that data.

Once I have the spreadsheet done I can load it into Book Crawler. Now I have a complete listing of my libraries and I can determine where a given book is based on the tags.

Matthew

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760358#Comment_760358

If your time is valuable to you, it might be worth buying the home edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking so that you can dictate bibliographic information about your dead tree library onto your computer. It will not be perfect especially with authors' names, but I find the process of holding a book and talking into a microphone much faster than trying to keep a book open to a certain page while typing, glancing back and forth between the book and screen, double checking you typed the ISBN correctly, etc. Especially if you have that many books to catalog, it might be worth looking into.

Anthony Sims

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760368#Comment_760368

This would be a good idea. Maybe you could have some friends come over and tag team it. In exchange they could take some books that you are definitely willing to sell/donate.

Mark Barnes

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760342#Comment_760342

This seems to not take into account journals? Not that I need them represented. Just trying to make sure I understand properly. By the way, thanks for all the help!!

See my final bullet point.

good reads gives the error:

invalid byte sequence in UTF-8

I think that will be something you should contact GoodReads support about.

Tim Taylor

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760434#Comment_760434

Perhaps you could use Zotero? They have a web browser plugin that makes adding books to your zotero library as easy as one click. Then you could use the Amazon app on ios perhaps to recognize your book covers with your iphone camera, and pull up the exact product on Amazon's website. Then import with that URL in the web browser plugin and you could quickly add all the details of your books that way. Not sure as to what kind of "compare" features you're looking for, but I've posted elsewhere on how to import your entire Logos library into Zotero as well, only takes a couple of minutes. This way you could get your entire Logos library and your entire print library into the same database. Again, you might want to explore the "compare" options that Zotero may give you and if it would fit what you're looking for, but just one idea to think about perhaps!

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760441#Comment_760441

Mathew - thats an interesting idea. I am thinking more along the lines of using the software that identifies the cover of a book in conjunction with a bluetooth mouse (click to take a photo) and a cardboard box with a hole in both sides and a light through one the box would have a tiny hole in the top for the camera... Then as fast as I can take a picture of the cover of a book with my cell or tablet, I can swap out the book and take another one. Something like this film scanner that I've made (photo not mine) in the past...

I may not get through 1000 books an hour, but if I can do 5 books a minute I'll be thrilled.

Perhaps you could use Zotero? They have a web browser plugin that makes adding books to your zotero library as easy as one click. Then you could use the Amazon app on ios perhaps to recognize your book covers with your iphone camera, and pull up the exact product on Amazon's website. Then import with that URL in the web browser plugin and you could quickly add all the details of your books that way. Not sure as to what kind of "compare" features you're looking for, but I've posted elsewhere on how to import your entire Logos library into Zotero as well, only takes a couple of minutes. This way you could get your entire Logos library and your entire print library into the same database. Again, you might want to explore the "compare" options that Zotero may give you and if it would fit what you're looking for, but just one idea to think about perhaps!

Mostly I just don't want to have any duplicates, and knowing whether I have the title in print, or in logos would also be nice. I have downloaded zotero, and I think I even managed to import my logos titles into zotero. I may look back into that.

This seems to not take into account journals? Not that I need them represented. Just trying to make sure I understand properly. By the way, thanks for all the help!!

See my final bullet point.

good reads gives the error:

invalid byte sequence in UTF-8

I think that will be something you should contact GoodReads support about.

Ahh yes. Will do. Thanks Mark!

I am leaving town for a few days, but here is some steps.

Assumptions:

Running Windows

IOS devices

Acquire Book Crawler

Access to spreadsheet

I start with downloading a freeware app called Logos Library Reporter.

Here is a link to the discussion of it: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/85971.aspx?PageIndex=1

Here is the link to the web site: http://l4libreport.clark-tx.net/

Basically once you install the app you will see that it copies your Logos catalog and then builds reports from that. You can export them to a csv file that can then be imported into a spreadsheet program.

Book Crawler Website: http://www.chiisai.com/j25/

Book Crawler the ios and Mac app has the ability to export and import data. I create an export from the app and that results in a base spreadsheet for me to follow loading data. For Logos data I need to do some cleaning up of some of the records; in particular I don't need a record for each of the multiple copies of a journal. I will take the column that has tags and add a new one that is called 'Logos". (you could do that within Logos if you wanted). Then I carefully copy out the columns and insert them into the Book Crawler spreadsheet.

For Kindle books I do a similar process. I'll have to expand on that when I come back, but basically you would go to your Kindle page on the web and capture all the data on the screen and then run some steps to clean up the data so that you can copy that into the spreadsheet along with your Logos data.

For paper books you can enter them manually into the app as it will use the camera to scan the codes. That might take a while. If you have those books in some sort of library tool you should be able to export that and merge that data.

Once I have the spreadsheet done I can load it into Book Crawler. Now I have a complete listing of my libraries and I can determine where a given book is based on the tags.

Thanks Bruce. I might give this a go as well.

This would be a good idea. Maybe you could have some friends come over and tag team it. In exchange they could take some books that you are definitely willing to sell/donate.

Not a bad idea.

I'd give someone any duplicate they found on the condition that they scanned them all in *chuckle*

Hey Anthony, what are you doing next weekend? I'll bring the boxes if you bring your phone.

Just kidding.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/760490#Comment_760490

I wanted to take a minute to update everyone on my progress on this.

I've not been able to make any method work in a way that isn't going to require hours of work on the data to prepare it to go one way or the other. Either I have to re-scan my library, or manipulate a CSV with 13,000 entries.

SO I broke down and called in a friend of mine that works for a company that develops iOS apps. His particular job is working on, and with databases. He merges, he manipulates, if any one can make it work (and probably with a script) than he can.

His goal is to take my .csv exported from Logos, and run a script that counts commas, inserts commas where they ought to be, and creates order from the chaos I have right now.

If it works, I'll post the method here, OR if possible, I'll prevail upon him to make an iOS app.... But thats a long shot.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/763541#Comment_763541

The Library can export its data in XML, which is far easier to process than CSV. In the Library, go to Print/Export and choose XML as the export format.

abondservant

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/763565#Comment_763565

The Library can export its data in XML, which is far easier to process than CSV. In the Library, go to Print/Export and choose XML as the export format.

Thanks Bradley, I'll save the data in a variety of formats, and he can use whichever he likes. I'd just planned on taking csv on a thumb drive, but having options is much better especially if XML is better for his setup.

Liam

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/763624#Comment_763624

I just learned about an app for Mac called Delicious Library 3. It might be something to look into.

Mikko Paavola

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/789077#Comment_789077

I'd love to do other way around: List my paper books in Logos library and be able to filter the library by type (Logos, print), etc. There could be a barcode scan option built in Logos (webcam / mobile).

(‾◡◝)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/789188#Comment_789188

FWIW: Here's the overview of a book cataloging program that might be of interest ... http://www.collectorz.com/book/

Here are features and screenshots ... http://www.collectorz.com/book/features.php

Also available in Mac ... http://www.collectorz.com/book/features-mac.php

I use their DVD cataloguing software (similar) and it is superb. Import, scan, manual input. Connects with online dbs to fill in missing metadata. Syncs with app via the cloud. Etc.

Yasmin Stephen

steve clark is offering to build a tool that will import our Logos books (no files, of course) into Calibre - with covers!! He says he'll work on it if enough people are interested - read more here: https://community.logos.com/forums/t/120724.aspx

David A Egolf

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/763624#Comment_763624

When choosing a database to employ, you should always consider the time when the software will no longer run. If the data is encapsulated in some proprietary format and the software will no longer run on, say, Windows 14, then you might as well feed it through a shredder. Eventually all software gives up the ghost. In order to protect yourself against that time, choose a product which will export its data into XML, or at least CSV. Either will allow you to process the data with yet another database product.

Well constructed XML is preferable, but even badly constructed XML will at least allow you to see the base data.

Yasmin Stephen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/790341#Comment_790341

In order to protect yourself against that time, choose a product which will export its data into XML, or at least CSV. Either will allow you to process the data with yet another database product.

Calibre exports to both CSV and XML.