Running and Managing a Personal Library

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Duiker

Duiker

kiwifarms.net
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
We all have extensive collections of media, whether thats books, movies, games, etc. I've thought a lot about the act of sharing media and the idea of running a personal library came to mind. Whether its in a mad max apocalypse or just depression era poverty, I am interested in the methods and strategies employed in running a library, even if that library is a small collection.
 
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Honestly, I feel like the "Little Free Library" project has an interesting concept as is, I would probably just branch off of their pre-existing idea.

A traditional library that's similar to or is managed by the local government requires a lot of resources. So you need a way to keep inventory, sorting the books, keeping the books in decent condition, figuring out how to get books returned to the library if they're taken out (like penalties), etc.

The concept of the Little Free Library project kind of solves most of these issues by having it be a small and manageable, easy to re-establish if it gets knocked down for some reason, the cost is pretty low if not nonexistent, etc., but the only real "downside" is that there's no real ownership of the books. You take one and leave one, and whatever that person does with the book they took is up to them now.

Otherwise, if you mean something more personal, I imagine you would just put up bookshelves (or just shelves in general) and have only trusted people borrow the media or manage a small community where maybe the media has to stay within the area.
 
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I am not rich enough to have a dead-tree library of any significant size. And many of the titles I might want in such a library would be academic or industrial titles that (even used) would run towards $100 each. My library is digital, and exists on a nas with raid hard drives.

I prefer epub format books. These are the ones that do "reflow"... they have no fixed page size, the application figures out how much can be shown on your screen and shows that. When epub isn't available, I'll settle for pdf if it is a "born-digital" pdf, that is it's not some god-awful scan that was dumped into the pdf format. Those tend towards 100mbytess even when given the content they should be 1-3mbytes.

I use a library classification scheme called Universal Decimal Classification for general titles. (Law/legal I use a classification called Moys). I like UDC over Dewey for many reasons, but the two biggest is that Dewey was always just awful for fiction that wasn't "great American novel" fiction. I like genre stuff. And even if you're a hardcore Christian, it's tough to justify reserving 99.9% of your theology numberspace for Christianity. UDC fixes these (and other) issues.

Anyone who has used Plex (for video) will tell you how it seems like the application is just wonderful, until one day the developers move on and decide they don't give a shit about you anymore and want to chase after becoming Netflix. So I map all of this into the filesystem to try to keep it application-agnostic. There are several folders in the root directory, but the one relevant to libraries is /Literature . I don't use titlecase (only the first word in a directory name is uppercased). I use spaces in directory and file names (this isn't 1986, and I despise the DOS aesthetic). UDC, like Dewey, breaks everything dow into "tens".

Code: 
/Literature
    /0xx - General works
    /1xx - Philosophy & psychology
    /2xx - Religion & theology
    /3xx - Social sciences
    /5xx - Mathematics & natural sciences
    /6xx - Applied sciences
    /7xx - Arts & recreation
    /8xx - Language & literature
    /9xx - History & geography

I try to make the directory tree as flat as possible, but many books/files end up 5 or 6 directories deep, once you have more than a few. I have not kept count, but I'm in the low tens of thousands of titles at this point. At one point, I was using Nextcloud to make these available remotely (to select friends), but the burden of doing that was irritating, and at some point I realized no one was using it. We don't really live in a literate society anymore.
 
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I don't have time at the moment to do a full write-up, but if there's interest I could be talked into doing it later next week. You can check out the wikipedia article for a brief overview, and the two volume set of PDFs that lists it all out is available on libgen. I've got other resources too, but I'm weary of linking here... don't know the board's policy on quasi-piracy stuff.
 
ChefBourgeoisie said:
I don't have time at the moment to do a full write-up
Click to expand...

I was referring to a plain text output with "real" (redacted, of course) folders, like so:

Code: 
/Literature
    /0xx - General works
    /1xx - Philosophy & psychology
    /2xx - Religion & theology
    /3xx - Social sciences
    /5xx - Mathematics & natural sciences
    /6xx - Applied sciences
    /7xx - Arts & recreation
    /8xx - Language & literature
    /9xx - History & geography

I'm curious to see how you handled nested folders and files.

ChefBourgeoisie said:
I don't have time at the moment to do a full write-up, but if there's interest I could be talked into doing it later next week.
Click to expand...

I'll throw my vote in for this.
 
Duiker said:
I've thought a lot about the act of sharing media and the idea of running a personal library came to mind.
Click to expand...
Not sure if this helps, but I've thought about drives. For under £10 I can get a 128gb USB drive/flash drive/SD card, and this is from a local place that often charges through the nose. While some collections can be quite large, especially 1080p quality video, some stuff can be compressed fairly small. Let's assume you can get some cheap, it might be a way to do it. Even a small deposit of sorts to cover the cost of the storage could work.
 
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Judge Dredd said:
Not sure if this helps, but I've thought about drives. For under £10 I can get a 128gb USB drive/flash drive/SD card, and this is from a local place that often charges through the nose. While some collections can be quite large, especially 1080p quality video, some stuff can be compressed fairly small. Let's assume you can get some cheap, it might be a way to do it. Even a small deposit of sorts to cover the cost of the storage could work.
Click to expand...
One should be careful of flash drives. Their use case is that of casual use, transferring files from one machine to another when no network is available. They will start to lose contents one bit at a time if they're powered off as little as a couple of weeks. They're very slow, so large collections take forever to move/use. And each time you read or write them, the flash degrades. The chips used in the cheap retail devices are sometimes rated for as little as 100 read/writes (they use a somewhat sophisticated algo to not keep reusing the same cell/node, so it can seem like they last longer).

If one wants to do long term digital, spinning platter hard drives (not solid state) are the way to go, with as much redundancy as you can afford. The highest tier solid state drives are also sufficient, but I am surely not rich enough to afford those. Also, at that point, you almost want ZFS, which rules out the middle tier prosumer NAS gear.

Personally, I really do prefer books, but dedicating a room (or three) for them just isn't in the homebuying budget. But if it were, I'd find some artisan carpenter to make me nice hardwood shelves built right into the wall, and then I'd run out of space a month later. A 20 terabyte drive's only about $450 though (except they've been on backorder for two years at this point, and no sign of it getting any better).
 
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Badungus Kabungus said:
If your library is digital, it may as well not exist. Media can get corrupted, power can go out. Get some print books, bros. Books are cheap nowadays.
Click to expand...
I may be the poorfag here, I can't tell. I certainly can't afford to buy paper books that have any sort of longevity... acid-free paper and non-mass-market bindings don't come cheap. I can't even afford to buy the titles I would want, though I doubt that even with their $100+ price tags that they are acid-free paper, or have good bindings. It's just that those are the books worth having. I can't go buy old copies in many cases, some of the topics are relatively recent, things people have only discovered or figured out within our lifetimes.

With some certainty, I know that I can keep digital files alive and useful for the next 40 years (if I can generate power to use it). I can keep far more of them (hundreds of thousands of titles), than I could ever keep of a proper library. I might even manage to share those without losing them myself.

And though we've heard it once every 12 months for all of our lives, there's always the slim chance that we might get the super-longevity technology that extends that 40 years out for thousand. Tomorrow, ten years from now. Maybe just right before things go to shit permanently. Won't hold my breath for it, can't count on it, but part of me hopes so.
 
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ChefBourgeoisie said:
One should be careful of flash drives. Their use case is that of casual use, transferring files from one machine to another when no network is available. They will start to lose contents one bit at a time if they're powered off as little as a couple of weeks.
Click to expand...
?

I wouldn't trust USB flash for long term storage, but they're not bleeding data in weeks.

ChefBourgeoisie said:
If one wants to do long term digital, spinning platter hard drives (not solid state) are the way to go, with as much redundancy as you can afford. The highest tier solid state drives are also sufficient, but I am surely not rich enough to afford those. Also, at that point, you almost want ZFS, which rules out the middle tier prosumer NAS gear.
Click to expand...
I mean I'd just start with ZFS anyway, even with rotational. There's no reason not to. The only disadvantage is that ZFS is a glutton for RAM, needing about 1GB of RAM per TB of raw storage.

ChefBourgeoisie said:
Personally, I really do prefer books, but dedicating a room (or three) for them just isn't in the homebuying budget. But if it were, I'd find some artisan carpenter to make me nice hardwood shelves built right into the wall, and then I'd run out of space a month later. A 20 terabyte drive's only about $450 though (except they've been on backorder for two years at this point, and no sign of it getting any better).
Click to expand...
Do you really need 22TB drives for collecting books? Or anything except HD video? An 8TB WD Red Plus is $160 on Amazon. A mirrored pair of those is essentially infinite books.
 
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unhealing wound said:
>BULK DOWNLOAD SCRIPT REMOVED
Is there no torrent for this?
Click to expand...

You can download all the zip archives using this shell script:

Code: 
#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -eou pipefail

links=(
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Architecture.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Astronomy.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Baking.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Banking.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Basketry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Bee_Journal_American.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Bee_Journal_British.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Beekeeping.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Berries.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Boilermaker.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Bookbinding.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Books_for_Boys_and_Girls.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Books_for_Young_Children.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Botany.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Boy_Scout_Manuals.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Brewing_and_Distilling.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Bridges_and_Dams.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Butchering.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Canning.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Cheese_and_Butter.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Chemistry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Christmas.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Clockmaking.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Coal_and_Mining.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Coffee_and_Tea.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Concrete.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Conduct_of_Life.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Construction.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Cooking_and_Cookbooks.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Cotton.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Cycles_Bi_Tri_Motor.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Dentistry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Dogs.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Drilling.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Economics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Embalming.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Encyclopedias.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Engineering_Drainage.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Engineering_Electrical.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Engineering_General.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Engineering_Hydraulics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Engraving_and_Woodcuts.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Ethics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Farming.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Farming_Corn.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Farming_Fish.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Farming_Potato_and_Sweet_Potato.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Firearms_Books.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Firearms_Manuals.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Fishing.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Food.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Forestry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Forging_and_Casting.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Formulas.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Fuels.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Geodesy.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Geography.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Glassmaking.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Grapes_Wine_Raisins.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Great_Books.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Gunpowder_and_Explosives.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Hatmaking.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Heating.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Heavy_Industrial_Machinery.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Hemp_and_Flax.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Herbalism.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/History_American.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Home_Economics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Horses.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Journalism.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Knitting_Lace_Needlepoint.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Laundry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Law.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Leather.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Leisure_Games_and_Sports.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Leisure_Recreation_Magazine.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Leisure_Whist.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Lithography.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Livestock_Cattle.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Livestock_Rabbits_and_Cavies.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Livestock_Sheep.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Livestock_Swine.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Machine_Tools.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Machinerys_Reference.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Masterpieces_of_Eloquence.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Mathematics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Mechanical_Drawing.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Anesthesia.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Courses_US_Army.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Diagnostics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Emergency.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Hypnotism.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Medicine_1900-1922.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Microscopy.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Nursing.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Obstetrics_1900-1922.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Surgery_1900-1922.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_Surgery_2.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Medical_X_Rays.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Meteorology.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Mimeograph.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Miscellaneous.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Monasticism.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Morality.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Mushrooms.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Musical_Instruments.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/NBC.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Navigation.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Opium.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Optometry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Painting.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Papermaking.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Photography.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Pottery.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Poultry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Primers.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Printing.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Radio.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Radio_73_Magazine.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Railroads.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Rat_Control.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Refrigeration.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Sanitation.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Scientific_American_Series_1.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Scientific_American_Series_2.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Sewage.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Sewing.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Shelter.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Shipbuilding.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Shoemaking.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Shorthand.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Silk_Culture.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Sliderules.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Smithing.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Steam_Engines.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Stone_and_Masonry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Surveying.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Survival_Individual.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Teaching.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Teaching_Arithmetic.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Teaching_Civics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Teaching_Phonics.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Teaching_Readers.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Teaching_Readers_McGuffey.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Telegraph_and_Telephone.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Thanksgiving.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Tobacco.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Toys.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Trapping_and_Hunting.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Turpentine_Glue_Solvents.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Veterinary.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Wagons_and_Coaches.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Weaving.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Welding.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Wind_and_Water.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Wood_Carpentry.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Wood_Carving.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/Wood_Furniture.zip
	https://www.survivorlibrary.com/library/World_Depression.zip
)

for link in ${links[@]}; do
	wget --continue {} $link
done

If you cancel the download and restart the script, it will pick up where it left off.
 
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Badungus Kabungus said:
Get some print books, bros. Books are cheap nowadays.
Click to expand...
yep, and a lot of libraries these days have "book sale" days, where you can pick up hardcover self help books, history books, kids books, anything for a dollar, or even a quarter. my husband found some nice hardcover books on beekeeping and foraging for 2 bucks!
i have some cheap ikea bookcases, and i collect so called "banned" classics, books on gardening and storing food, home repair, all kinds of things that could be useful. i really want to get copies of all the foxfire books, but those are kind of expensive, when trying to get all of them.
as for the little free library, i think its a scam..200 bucks for the little bookshelf, and then they push for people to put out "inclusive" nonsense from the start..best to do your own thing.
 
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The problem I always see with these massive collections of books is that you will obviously need to have it stored on an external drive, that will have to be accessed by a desktop/laptop, which all use a lot of power that you may not have access to in some chaotic scenario.

The best approach is probably, download all the books to some external drive, and then wrap that drive in some type of seal and keep it in a relatively normal temp room. Unless you are constantly accessing the drive you shouldn't worry too much about it degrading anytime soon. Maybe every few years switch it out if you are worried.

Now that you feel better about getting a massive pile of books that will probably not be accessible in some bad situation; you need to create a simple plan for a few most likely bad situations that you may experience. Are you in a city and you are more at risk of riots? Are you in the country side and have the ability to plant actual vegetation. You can have 6000 books but if you have no plan they are basically useless. A book on guns isn't very helpful if you don't have a gun or the resources to make one? Same thing for cooking, technology, etc. Once you have that plan, get a few paperbacks (look at thrift stores, online stores) of the most relevant things for you. This is your failsafe to survival. I disagree that old books won't work. People have survived for a long time before the past 10 years so I think you'll be okay having a slightly dated book, instead of having nothing at all.

My ranting is basically saying. Make the backup, make a plan, get some paperbacks. There would be some value in maybe getting a kindle and some type of external battery that charges via solar if you'd like. Kindles and other readers like them can last 30-40 hours before needing a charge so it might be another option for you to have.
 
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h2_jGX said:
Honestly, I feel like the "Little Free Library" project has an interesting concept as is, I would probably just branch off of their pre-existing idea.

A traditional library that's similar to or is managed by the local government requires a lot of resources. So you need a way to keep inventory, sorting the books, keeping the books in decent condition, figuring out how to get books returned to the library if they're taken out (like penalties), etc.

The concept of the Little Free Library project kind of solves most of these issues by having it be a small and manageable, easy to re-establish if it gets knocked down for some reason, the cost is pretty low if not nonexistent, etc., but the only real "downside" is that there's no real ownership of the books. You take one and leave one, and whatever that person does with the book they took is up to them now.

Otherwise, if you mean something more personal, I imagine you would just put up bookshelves (or just shelves in general) and have only trusted people borrow the media or manage a small community where maybe the media has to stay within the area.
Click to expand...

There's lots of downsides to LFL. The first one is that books really don't like being outside and are likely to be destroyed by heat, humidity, and other types of weather. The second is that even if you don't have people who will outright steal books or whatever, what you'll end up with is people "trading down", a technical 1:1 trade but the books that can't even be given away.

The realistic options—if you want to "share knowledge"—is to just give others, in person or online, online files (including articles from paywalled sources), scanned if you must. (Always scan your own stuff.) If you have books you can lend them out to people you generally like and trust.

Ideally, a brick-and-mortar library only open to select patrons (not expensive, but signing in as an absolute minimum—something to keep out the trash while not denying entry to the commoners) would be the best solution but unless you're flush with money and in the good graces of the local elite, that's not happening.
 
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