Over the past few months, I’ve been hard at work organizing and inventorying the contents of the library, both books and sports cards. It initially started as a project for insurance purposes, since in order to get specialized insurance for my collectables I had to know what specifically was being insured. There was a lot of stuff to go through!
As I gathered that data, I realized that it was also an opportunity to showcase my collections in a more digitally accessible way. For the sports cards, I was scanning my cards using an app called Ludex, which makes the process of scanning a collection, identifying cards, and finding pricing information very straightforward. I was able to export data from the app in JSON, and then write a simple React app called Sports Card Showroom that I could host on S3 to show off my cards.
For the books, I used an app called Bookshelf that, similar to Ludex, makes it easy to scan collections of books and log metadata such as authors, publish dates, volume counts, and pricing. It has a very nice export feature, which allows data to be exported to CSV as well as to HTML. I was able to use the HTML that it generated and upload it to S3 as well, giving me a nice showcase for the Hardin Library.
It’s been a really fun process to back through all of the things I’ve collected and to be able to rediscover some things that I’d forgot I even had! Keeping these inventory apps up to date going forward will be a great way to encourage myself to continue to enjoy my collections.
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