I’m looking at moving from Book Collector to Books Web and wonder how anyone records books they have borrowed, from a library for example.
I’d like to record books that I have read but don’t own (also their read history). I see there’s a ‘Collection Status’ of ‘Not In Collection’ and I guess I could use that but I cannot edit that pick list to say ‘Borrowed’. It would also be nice to say where I borrowed it from. I’d like to check if I’ve read a book before I borrow it again.
Can anyone advise what might be a good way of doing this?
I use the purchase store and owner field to clarify where I borrowed it from.
Put the name of the libary, your friend etc as owners. And borrowed as purchased store, add the date you got it as purchased date if you like. Modify if needed. Like you could the name of the library in the purchased field instead of the owner field.
I’ve seen users use the “not in collection” status, as that also helps with your Statistics.. because Not in Collection does not count towards your totals - but you can still keep track of the read status!
And indeed, Owner, Purchase Store, or even Location could help you identifying where you got it from.
And on top of that we will introduce “Custom Fields” later so you could create your own field - but the Collection Status as “Not in Collection” is still important (because of your statistics)
Thanks both ritreffem and CLZ_AJ. That’s very helpful. I’ve started using Owner as ritreffem suggests, to record where I borrowed it from, plus Purchase Store ‘Borrowed’. And thanks CLZ_AJ, I’m putting ‘Not in Collection’ for those books. Should make it easy to list all my borrowed books or filter down to those I’ve borrowed from a specific place. The reading history is great, though it set all my books to ‘Finished’ (a known problem, didn’t bother me as I just cleared them all). I’m now going to start using CLZ Books to record my reading, which I wasn’t doing before.
I’ve checked your settings and at least you don’t have Read History as pre-fill field, so for new books you’re adding it shouldn’t put them as “Finished” in there
I started using loan manager for library books last year. It seems to work quite well, except I have to use the “loaned to” field for the name of the issuing library, which looks a bit weird, but I can live with it. I use the collection status “Not in collection” and the owning library in the “Owner” field. I also keep these in a separate collection called “Borrowed”.
the downside of using the “not in collection” status is an item is not identified as being in your database in the core search dialogs … then you have to deal with that annoying “item already exists …” message (at least in the desktop version).
I also use the location field as “public library” (or any other relevant library or person or organization) when borrowing an item; and leave the owner field blank for public libraries, but fill in with other sources I borrow from that are not public libraries … this work-around works just fine for me.
