One of the ways in which you can organize the library is by using LibraryThing (www.librarything.com). It was originally developed for personal libraries (I use it for that) and as a social media platform for booklovers. Libraries are now using it to catalog their books (the interface draws the information directly from the Library of Congress, Amazon, and many other sources) and have the listing online for their patrons. You can also choose to keep the library private so that no one can see it except the person who put the library together, though I believe it can be shared privately. It does not have a module for keeping track of circulation, but you may not need that. There is a very small one-time charge to enter more than 200 books (I think that's the amount) into your account.

For an example of an institutional library collection on LibraryThing, see http://www.librarything.com/catalog/JYF_Library, which is one of the two libraries used at my employer, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. We are working at putting the other library online, using LibraryThing, in the future.

As far as LOC or Dewey cataloging is concerned, the resulting records include both, in standardized form, meaning that you don't have to invent a system for yourself or learn how to do LOC or Dewey cataloging (each complicated in their own way). For labeling the books with a classification number, you can use a fine-point Sharpie to write the number directly on the spine or purchase book labels from Gaylord, one of the major library supply companies, and write the numbers on those.

I am the librarian for my small (2500 or so records) synagogue library, and we have been using another system (Readerware) for about 10 years, but I am in the process of cleaning up the database so that I can export it to LibraryThing and have it online for all of our congregants. Readerware's database is only available on the computer in which it resides, which makes it impractical for our situation, and it is more expensive than LibraryThing.

Hope this helps.

Martha Katz-Hyman
Curator
Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation

Williamsburg, VA

On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 6:41 PM, Jerrie Clarke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

We're a small archaeology museum with a nice small reference library. The books in the library have never been cataloged fully and never put in the museum's database. The curator and I are discussing using a library catalog number as well as an object id number to specify the topic and help us organize them on the shelves. Her last museum used Library of Congress and mine used Dewey Decimal in order to be part of the town's library consortium.

Library of Congress is very complicated and most of the books at my last museum seem to begin with the same Dewey Decimal number. I'm wondering if other small museums use one of these systems or just give the books a object id number; or do something entirely different. Any recommendations?

Jerrie Clarke
Director
Lost City Museum
PO Box 2507
Overton, NV 89040
(702) 397-2193

http://museums.nevadaculture.org

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