Your Library

A brief history of libraries

• The first known library was a collection of clay tablets in Babylonia in the twenty-first century B.C.A.

• The Temple at Jerusalem had a sacred library

• The Greeks started private collections as well as public libraries for the works of their great dramatists

• Christian libraries in medieval times were in monasteries

• In the fifteenth century the oldest European public library, in the Vatican, was created

• The earliest university library was at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1257

• Most other European university libraries were founded during the next two centuries

• By the eighteenth century it was de rigueur  for any proper gentleman to have an elegantly designed library room

Work cited: At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries, by Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm, and Christopher Simon Sykes

An organized book collection is a library!

You choose how to organize your collection.  By color? By title? By topic? By author? By size?

As a fellow reader with over thirty years of library work experience, I can organize your collection using my learned expertise. I accommodate your wishes-- there's no "right" or "not right" way to create a library collection.

A good library deserves a good catalog

A catalog is a finding tool

Search your catalog by author, title, or subject to find the exact book you want to retrieve. The catalog breaks through the fog of imperfect memory.

A catalog is an inventory

If you insure your collection, your catalog is a detailed description of your possession.

A catalog displays pride of ownership

We readers have experience with the catalogs of public, academic, or corporate libraries. We know the importance of catalogs for libraries we've used. Your library deserves the dignity a library catalog confers on your collection.

A catalog is an opportunity to share your collections with other readers

Your catalog can live on your device for your use only. Or, I can make your catalog available on the Internet for world-wide access, or you can limit its access to only those you choose.

Your catalog 

Could be as simple as an alphabetical listing of titles

Additional elements could be: author, name of publisher, place of publication, number of pages, height, contents notes, subject or topic of the book.

Cost of cataloging increases with the number of elements you want in your catalog.