My latest time consuming project

In December, I went to the Scholastic Warehouse Book Sale. It was an amazing event to experience, but a bit overwhelming. I found that I was constantly saying to myself "Do I have that book already? I can't remember...". The same thing happens when I wander into Half Price Books or any other place with books that are "great deals". Over the years I have accumulated a wide variety of books that live upstairs on a number of bookshelves, but I have no idea what exactly IS there. Now that I am shopping with some future classroom in mind, it's become more important to me to figure out what I already have before I start spending money.

So an organization idea was born. I don't have an IPhone, and until this week I didn't have access to an IPod Touch. I'm sure that there might be a comparable app that can be used to do this same type of thing. I'll leave that to someone else to figure out since I've already embarked on this adventure with the technology that I do possess and will continue to use after our Certification Program is completed. This is time consuming as it is, without trying to use two different interfaces!!

I have a Windows 7 phone (Samsung Focus), which has the capability of linking to my Windows Live Account.

It serves a similar function as Google docs. I am able to create documents, Excel spread sheets, PowerPoint presentations, store photographs and more, virtually, to be accessed from other locations, just like Google Docs. I decided to set up an Excel Spreadsheet containing an organized list of what books I currently have at home, so that if I am out and come across a "great deal" unexpectedly, I can use my phone to quickly check to see if it's something that I already have, or look at my wish list for ideas of what I need. 

     

I was able to set up categories such as Picture book, Easy Reader, and Non-fiction, and alphabetize (by title) as I went. It will take me quite a while to enter my library into the spreadsheet and I will probably be working on it off and on for the next few months as time permits. But once it's there, I will just add titles as I buy and keep going from there.

After entering quite a few titles, I stopped to check to see how easy it would be to find a  particular title. I searched for the word "Fancy", wanting to pull up which Fancy Nancy books I have and it took me immediately to the entry with a link to the cell in the spreadsheet that I could click to go to.