Category for Affiliated Societies

[epiphyte]

How many books does your orchid society library have? I wonder which orchid society has the noteworthy distinction of having the most orchid books? It would be kind of fun if the AOS created a page that featured the orchid society with the most members, the orchid society with the most informative website, the orchid society with the most articles written by members, the orchid society with the largest library, the orchid society with the best newsletter, the orchid society with the most members under 30...anything else?

To get back to orchid society libraries...as I'm sure you heard, Google is in the process of digitizing every book ever written. They have a feature where you can add books to your Google library and search only the books in your library. If your society's librarian adds all your society's orchid books to their Google library, then your members could easily find which books contained the information that they are looking for.

While it might seem like a daunting task to add all of your society's books to your Google library...it's not as daunting as it sounds. The Google guy, Matt Cutts, blogged how you can easily add your books to your Google library using a $65 barcode scanner. If you have books that don't have barcodes or ISBNs...don't despair! Set those aside and after you've added the books with barcodes you can search Google Books for the titles. Chances are really good that you will be able to find the titles to add to your library. However, not all of them have been digitized but it's really only a matter of time.

I recently added my collection of orchid books to my Google library. Out of 127 orchid books, only 9 of them could not be found in Google Books. Because all my orchid books are in an Access database, I just copy and pasted the ISBNs into the import books feature. Then I added the rest by way of title search. Not sure how it happened but I ended up with 147 books in my Google library.

Incidentally, my primary interest when it comes to orchids is learning about all the epiphytic orchid species which can be grown outdoors year around in nearly frost free climates... so my Google library is a pretty decent bibliography on the subject. Well...minus a few garage sale deals.