How can I organize this data? Database?

[tauro_kpo]

Hello everyone,

I have a lot of texts and books I have read here on my house, and what I want is to systematise them in a list or database (I don't know how should it be called). In order to be able to type the name of the author, and get all the names of the books that I have from this author, their years of publication, and other complementary data that belongs to each book. Or perhaps type a year, and get all the books I have published in that year.

How can I do this? I ask this here because I have never used databases, nor I have any clue of how should I do this.

Can anybody please help?

Thank you very much in advance!

[Cabhan]

A database can certainly accomplish this. You would need to install the database software (I'm most familiar with MySQL, but I hear good things about PostgreSQL as well), and then create a database inside it (called "personal_records", perhaps), and then create tables (e.g. "books"), which contain the data.

How to use databases is outside the scope of this post, but MySQL does have a basic tutorial on using SQL (the language for interacting with most databases) and database design:
MySQL :: MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual :: 3 Tutorial

[oz]

For some database options, take a look through the listing at the link below to see if you can find an app that would suit your particular likes and needs:

Databases | Linux App Finder

[atreyu]

Is there some kind of scanner that can read the UPC or ISBN on the book itself? If such a thing existed (I know bar-code scanners for PCs exist), this would *greatly* simplify your effort.

[Cabhan]

Yes...actually, don't bother with a database directly :-p.

There exists library and general organizer software out there that is great for books. I've used one in the past (can't remember its name), and it helped us run a small library a lot.

[elija]

Alexandria may be what you want. It may be in your distro's repository.

[drl]

Hi.

I have a license for Readerware - Music, Video & Book Database Software

As atreyu mentioned, I purchased a used hand-scanner -- looks kind of like a pistol that shoots a red line. It is placed electrically between the keyboard and PC. I then was able to input CD UPC strings easily (it essentially types the translation of the UPC). The software then searched places like Amazon, picked up the information (composer, date, cost, etc.) and artwork and saved it in the database.

If you have a newer computer, you might need to find a USB-based UPC reader.

That combination saved me a lot of time. After that, I could enter items individually or batch them up with the bar code reader. You can create custom reports for printing.

My impression is that it is a small outfit. I was sent free updates for a long time -- at least 2 years.

I hasten to add that this was an application that I ran on a Windows box (probably W2K), but it's available for Windows, Mac, Linux. I seem to recall that there was a lot of Java involved, but the installation was painless.

No matter how easy that was, I tend to like plain text, so most of my technical book details are kept in a simple, semi-structured text file with entries like:

Title: Exploring Expect 
Subtitle: A Tcl-based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs
Author: Don Libes
Edition: First
Date: December 1994
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN: 1-56592-090-2
Pages: 602
Categories: scripting, interacting, automating, system administration
Comments: 3.5 stars (25 reviews) http://www.amazon.com
Comments: elderly book, but still useful

This can be easily searched with a number of tools such as:

agrep - search a file for a string or regular expression, with approximate matching capabilities

or awk, perl, etc., scripts.

Keep us posted on what you finally decide to use.

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

[hazel]

Actually you could probably do it with a simple text file and a few stored awk scripts for the queries. But you'd have to learn awk syntax.