My (soon to be) Newest Acquisition.

I will soon, if all goes well, obtain or myself (and Sherri too, by marriage) a new computer program. It is actually one of those that is designed to make life easier, and give the user more free time, other than those other ones that merely waste time. I am planning to purchase Library Master, a personal library catalogue system, whereby I will be able to catalogue and search mine and Sherri’s extensive library. Okay, maybe not that extensive, but I suppose, on average, it is pretty extensive for people our age and in our income bracket. And besides, most, if not all, of the books that we possess have been read, will be read, are being read, or will be used in some research capacity.

This idea has been germinating in my head for some time now, since a couple of my professors have stressed the importance of organizing the resources that we will obtain over our lives. Dr. Van Dam, during our visit to his house, showed us his cataloguing system, done completely on index cards. That was impressive. But, being one of those people that would prefer to do it on computer, I decided to save myself and Sherri a whole lot of trouble and time, and do this on the computer. This way, I have a machine that will do the hard work for me, and I can also easily update information and correct it if need be later on, much easier than an index system. Although the index card system has an aesthetic quality to it that I can’t deny.

I tried out a few of these programs (I love companies that put free demo programs on the internet). I chose Library Master over the runner up, Resourcemate, mostly because of its looks. It, unlike Resourcemate, displays search results in a list, and then I can simply click on the title that I want, and it will display all the book info, whereas in Resourcemate there is no list; it is all in one window, and I just have to keep clicking through windows to see all of my search results... there is no way to list them all and compare them.

It was kind of a shame, since Resourcemate is Canadian (out of Guelph), and Library Master, from Balboa software (Although the Rocky reference is a big plus), was once Canadian, it seems, but now resides south of the border, in Arizona. But my Canadian patriotism does not extend to substandard merchandise. Okay, maybe not substandard, but it was just too inconvenient for my liking.

It will, however, take some time to catch up to ourselves in the book cataloguing department. I have, essentially, 6 ½ years of University education book buying to catalogue, which means that I know what I will be doing for my Christmas break, on top of studying my Hebrew and Greek, and memorizing the Heidelberg Catechism. But I look forward to it, and once it is done, then Sherri and I can finally see how many books we actually do have (my estimate now is at about 700).

Well, I will sign off now, and get back to my homework.

And I will try to blog more frequently, or at least more systematically, in the future. It’s just better for everyone involved that way, I think.