Jayeeta Majumdar Singhee

For those of you, who have tried their hands at building a library of some sort…..will surely understand what I am talking about. After years of yearning for a full fledged library room, filled with books, books and even more books – I finally got something in my new house..(not even remotely close to the size I would really like), but def worthy of a mention. All thanks to Designscape – our interior designers.

But now that I have a library, I need to work on the next most important thing - make tangible my great vision of a grand and reasonably organized pile of books, that will fill my small library, and maybe even inspire and make me a more clued-up???? person :-d.

So, for all those in a similar situation – a list of things that will help you get started….

• Firstly, you need a proper catalogue for all your books. Of course! How else will you know what books you already have and what others you really want to buy? Writing it on a piece of paper is ephemeral, so I store it on my computer. One can use an excel sheet, or Delicious Monster, or even use online portals like LibraryThing.
  
  But then I use the real thing - that too for FREE. I store it on my desktop (which means it is private and secure) and share them only with the people I want (over the net, which makes it social). How? I use Dekoh Books - it helps me make my catalogue, search for my books online (along with the book cover), create my wish list, tag my collections, mark my favs, give personalized ratings to each one of them, and also mark what I am currently reading.
  
  It could do with a mobile synch feature (to help me carry my wish list), but for now I either take a printout of my wish list, or sms it to myself using Yahoo.

• To decide what I want to buy for my library, I use nytimes, http://www.washingtonpost.com/, http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/, http://middlestage.blogspot.com/.
  
  But what I particularly like is India Uncut’s “Rave Out”. Just the good stuff - gives a positive coalesce-fying groove, so you know what is worth buying. There’s no 100% guarantee of course, but you know it will be surely worth a shot.

• Lastly, the most important thing of all – go out and buy the book – either online or use the store next to your house.
  

Update 1: While browsing for comics, came across this site http://www.dootdootgarden.com/. Fantastic!

Update 2: Also, if you are an ardent comic fan, try this Indian site (http://blog.whitedrongo.com/). Quite a prized collection this.