What you own, down to the copy

Most sites that know about books, films and records are built to log what you consumed. You finished the novel, you watched the film, you listened to the album. They are diaries, and the thing they record is an event in your life.

ctlgs records objects. Not "I read Moby-Dick" but "I own the 1972 Penguin paperback, the one with the Edward Gorey cover, and the spine is faded." Not "I've seen Videodrome" but "I have the Criterion Blu-ray, region A, still sealed." The subject of the sentence changes from you to the thing.

That sounds like a small distinction until you try to use the diary sites for collecting, and find there is nowhere to put any of what you know.

Why the object needs its own entry

A title is not a thing you can own. Dune has been printed hundreds of times, and the 1965 Chilton first edition and a 2021 movie tie-in paperback have almost nothing in common except the words inside. One is worth a month's rent. The other was three dollars in an airport bookshop.

The same goes in every category. A gigposter exists as an edition of 100 signed and numbered prints and as an unsigned second run. A film exists as a VHS, a Region 2 DVD with the wrong aspect ratio, and a restored 4K disc with two commentaries. A turntable exists as the original 1979 model and as the reissue with a different cartridge.

Collectors already know this, and say it in exactly this way: which pressing, which printing, which run. A site that only knows titles cannot hear the question, let alone answer it.

How ctlgs is put together

Every catalog here splits the title from the object.

• The title groups everything that shares a work: one entry for Dune the book, one for Videodrome the film.
• The object is the thing that exists: an edition, a release, a specific print run, with its own publisher, year, format, catalogue number and barcode.

Then your own copy sits under the object, and it is yours alone:

• Each copy on its own. Two of the same edition is a normal thing for a collector and an impossible thing on most sites. Here they are two records, each with its own condition and location.
• Condition, in the vocabulary the category actually uses.
• Where it is — which shelf, which room, which storage unit.
• What you paid, and when you got it. Private to you.

A copy is the smallest unit on ctlgs, and everything else is built on it. Your collection is a set of copies. A listing is a copy you are willing to part with. What you are missing is a wantlist of objects, not of titles, so it can tell you that you have the paperback and want the hardback.

What this is good for

Knowing what you have. The reason most collections are partly unknown to their owners is that writing them down was never worth the effort. Detail that goes in once and stays is worth the effort.

Insurance and loss. "Forty books" is not a claim. Forty editions with publishers, years, codes and condition is.

Buying without duplicating. The question in a shop is never "have I read this" — it is "do I have this one".

Keeping the record straight. Catalog entries here are shared and edited by everyone, the way a reference database should be, so the work of pinning down what a 1972 Penguin Moby-Dick actually is gets done once.

Where to start

Pick the thing you own most of and add one copy of it. Everything else — the condition fields, the second copy, the wantlist, the shelves you group things into — comes after, and only if you want it.

The guides go category by category.