Counting Books and Moving Stories.
Sorry I've been missing. I have spent quite a bit of time over the end of last week and today literally up to my knees in books. Georgia from the Churches' Bookshop and I have been stocktaking before moving books to the new premises from the place where they have been stored in our church.
We sit opposite each other with one of the many boxes of books between us and an empty box. I take the books out, read out title, ISBN number, and price, and Georgia enters them onto the computer (the old data base was not up to date, and then was corrupted, so we are doing them on an Excel sheet at present even though they will eventually need transferring to the new 'proper' one, because it will be easier to copy from Excel than have to do it from the books, once shelved). Then it goes into the 'checked' box.
But we are identifying quite a few that have been in stock for a while and, after the first hour or two of saying 'When we get there this could go onto the reduced shelf', it occurred to us to star a 'reduced' box straight away. So now we also have that close at hand.
We have also found really interesting books that we have not noticed on the shelves or that seem to have been placed in the wrong category.
So we have decided we should become consultants to publishers after quite often concluding a number of reasons that a book has been in stock for a long time.
A. Because it has a boring, or old fashioned, cover, or cover art that implies a different type of book than it actually is. For example a study on the book of Daniel which had an oil painting of a small cottage on the cover... why!!
B. No title needs to me more that 6 or 7 words long.
C. But a little more description than yet another book labelled 'Prayer' helps.
D. Make the spine interesting. Most books are shelved without the front cover showing - drab olive with the word 'prayer' on it is not going to encourage us to pull it out and look at it.
There are definitely fashions and some books go out of fashion quickly. Georgia identified a couple of books, correctly, as probably having been published between 2006 and 2014 because they clearly belonged to 'The short Wishy-washy period of Christianity' :)
We have catalogued around 1,000 titles in the past few days, and so we are about half way through the books. We have also worked out a system for the gifts and cards when we get to them. And will then be transferring stock over, and onto the new shelves, by the end of the week.
It is enjoyable as well as quite hard work - Georgia is younger than D-d so we are definitely different generations, but are quite often on the same wave length.
After 3 or 4 hours at a time of that I have also been picking up NYK2 from school.
And on Thursday I suddenly decided, after thinking of it since January or February, to begin to upload all the stories I have written over the years to AO3 (Archive Of Our Own), where a small number had been archived for me five or six years ago when an older archive was closed in a very organised fashion. This decision was prompted by Faerie, one of the two archives I have had them on, suddenly disappearing.
Actually uploading is not difficult - but I find myself re-reading them as I go, just in case! So almost 85,000 words have been read and transfered so far; 4 out of 20 stories - and then there are literally hundreds of drabbles.
Of course then I found things I hadn't read for years by other people, and new things that caught my eye... This may take some time!
I must change the links in the sidebar to remove Faerie, and add AO3 in case anyone wants to find them via those links :)
So, apolgies for missing posts - I may well not cath up so please aim me at things you think I should see, or need to know.
We sit opposite each other with one of the many boxes of books between us and an empty box. I take the books out, read out title, ISBN number, and price, and Georgia enters them onto the computer (the old data base was not up to date, and then was corrupted, so we are doing them on an Excel sheet at present even though they will eventually need transferring to the new 'proper' one, because it will be easier to copy from Excel than have to do it from the books, once shelved). Then it goes into the 'checked' box.
But we are identifying quite a few that have been in stock for a while and, after the first hour or two of saying 'When we get there this could go onto the reduced shelf', it occurred to us to star a 'reduced' box straight away. So now we also have that close at hand.
We have also found really interesting books that we have not noticed on the shelves or that seem to have been placed in the wrong category.
So we have decided we should become consultants to publishers after quite often concluding a number of reasons that a book has been in stock for a long time.
A. Because it has a boring, or old fashioned, cover, or cover art that implies a different type of book than it actually is. For example a study on the book of Daniel which had an oil painting of a small cottage on the cover... why!!
B. No title needs to me more that 6 or 7 words long.
C. But a little more description than yet another book labelled 'Prayer' helps.
D. Make the spine interesting. Most books are shelved without the front cover showing - drab olive with the word 'prayer' on it is not going to encourage us to pull it out and look at it.
There are definitely fashions and some books go out of fashion quickly. Georgia identified a couple of books, correctly, as probably having been published between 2006 and 2014 because they clearly belonged to 'The short Wishy-washy period of Christianity' :)
We have catalogued around 1,000 titles in the past few days, and so we are about half way through the books. We have also worked out a system for the gifts and cards when we get to them. And will then be transferring stock over, and onto the new shelves, by the end of the week.
It is enjoyable as well as quite hard work - Georgia is younger than D-d so we are definitely different generations, but are quite often on the same wave length.
After 3 or 4 hours at a time of that I have also been picking up NYK2 from school.
And on Thursday I suddenly decided, after thinking of it since January or February, to begin to upload all the stories I have written over the years to AO3 (Archive Of Our Own), where a small number had been archived for me five or six years ago when an older archive was closed in a very organised fashion. This decision was prompted by Faerie, one of the two archives I have had them on, suddenly disappearing.
Actually uploading is not difficult - but I find myself re-reading them as I go, just in case! So almost 85,000 words have been read and transfered so far; 4 out of 20 stories - and then there are literally hundreds of drabbles.
Of course then I found things I hadn't read for years by other people, and new things that caught my eye... This may take some time!
I must change the links in the sidebar to remove Faerie, and add AO3 in case anyone wants to find them via those links :)
So, apolgies for missing posts - I may well not cath up so please aim me at things you think I should see, or need to know.