Cataloguin’ away

Last week I began the monster job of cataloging our library on LibraryThing.  Still in the honeymoon 200-volume free-membership phase, but I can already foresee we’ll be getting a paid membership in the next week or two, ’cos I’m gonna use up the 200 free volumes before I ever get out of the Texana.  (I began with the Texana/collectibles bookcase, because (1) it has the most high-dollar items in it (2) that really need to be catalogued, so we can see whether (3) we need to adjust the collectibles rider on our homeowners’ insurance.)

I haven’t yet run a register tape on it, but right now, two thirds of the way through that one bookcase, I’d guess that I’ve catalogued close to $10,000 worth.  I’ve got a few real pretties, like a signed true first of The Last Picture Show ($1,000 or so), three or four Ruth Plumly Thompson Oz books ($125 to $150 each), the Book Club of Texas limited edition of Goodbye to a River ($300), signed first printings of the first three volumes of Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ ($150 each, probably more if sold as a set), Donald Barthelme’s The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine ($100 and up), an un-numbered advance copy of Clark Coursey’s Courthouses of Texas (a gift from Bunrab and Squirrel Magnet, probably $150), and a bunch of others—and I still have two whole shelves to go.  And then we tackle the other six six-foot-by-thirty-six-inch bookcases, plus M’s six-foot-by-thirty-inch bookcase, plus several smaller bookcases.  One way and another, I have a feeling that we’d be hard put to replace our library for much less than $30,000, and it might go as high as fifty.