As I was discussing in the previous blog, I have been trying to get the mess reference materials down to a size that I would be able to manage and would be able to locate when I needed and item. There were about 300 CDs in 6 containers, holding 50 CDs each, that represented 730 various reference materials that I have amassed over the years. This was beyond the 8 shelf feet of notebooks with various citations. The notebooks are now gone (digitizing any items that I could not easily replicate). The CDs and their containers are now gone (all items including the ones that I somehow lost in the transfer) now reside on a 1 TB external disk drive.

With 8 shelf feet of space cleared, I was able to pull my complete set of Silver Books (Mayflower Families, Volumes 1-25) out of the closet and along with my Descendants of Governor Thomas Welles (6 volume set) and the tree volume set of Biographies of Original Members and Qualifying Officers Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut and store / display them there. Now that shelf happens to be 7 feet above the floor. I had the presence of mind to keep the index to the Welles volumes and the Index to the Silver Books on a lower-level shelf so I could just pull down one volume when I needed it.

A number of years ago, I created a Microsoft Access database to keep track of the contents of my Library. The library distinguishes between Books and Digital Books. I have just completed a full audit of the digital side of the house, now on to the Book side – it should be easier as there are only 277 of them!