Collection management for collectors

If you have been looking for a book cataloguing website, or for online collection management that also covers films, posters, comics, gear and games, this is the short version of what ctlgs is and what it does today: a shared catalog of collectable objects, and under each object, your own record of the copies you own.

Collection management here starts from the object, not from you. Not "I read this" or "I watched this" but "I own this printing of it, in this condition, on that shelf." That distinction is the whole idea of the site: tracking what you own.

One shared entry per printing

Most tools that touch books, films or records are built for something next door to collecting: borrowing, buying, or logging what you got through. They work at the level of the title, and where they hold editions at all they tend to make a fresh one every time somebody adds a copy — so the same paperback ends up with forty near-identical entries and no way to tell them apart.

ctlgs is built the other way round. One entry per object, down to the printing: this publisher, this year, this ISBN, this cover. Everyone who owns that printing edits that one entry, so pinning down what it actually is gets done once and keeps getting better. Your copies hang underneath it, and adding a copy never makes a new catalog entry. The long version: editions and pressings.

A book cataloging website, and six more besides

Both spellings are in use — cataloguing with the u, cataloging without it — and both land here. Books is one of seven catalogs: books, 21,000 books and 157,000 editions under them; home video, 50,000 films and 71,000 discs and tapes; gigposters, 38,000 print runs; comics, 55,000 issues; hi-fi and music gear, 21,000 pieces of gear between them; and video games, which is new and small.

Each one splits the title from the object you can hold. The fields differ because collectors' questions do — a poster has a printer and a run size, a Blu-ray has a region, a turntable has a drive type.

Catalogue your collection, copy by copy

A copy is the unit, and you catalog your collection one copy at a time: add one from any object's page, then fill in as much or as little as you like.

• As many copies as you own. Two of the same edition is two copies, each with its own condition, notes and location — not a number in a quantity box. Of three copies of a poster, one can be mint and rolled, one pinholed and framed, one a spare.
• Condition in the words your category uses. Books run As new, Fine, Near fine, Very good, Good, Fair, Poor. Comics run from Mint down through Very fine. Gear ends at For parts. Video games add a Completeness field — Sealed, Complete in box, Game and box, Loose — because that is what collectors sort by first.
• Where it is, what you paid and when you got it, in your own currency.
• Up to twenty fields of your own per catalog — yes/no, free text, or a list of choices you define. Serial number, which box it is in, who sold it to you.

Location, what you paid and when you acquired it are owner-only: never shown to anybody else, whatever else you make public.

What other people can see

Each list has its own privacy setting: public, counted-only, or private. Counted-only shows your username next to the count of owners on an entry without letting anyone browse the list; private hides the username and still counts you. How ctlgs works has the rest.

The one deliberate exception is a listing. Putting a copy up for sale makes that copy public, with its condition and an optional price and "ships from". ctlgs takes no payment and is not a marketplace — buyer and seller talk in a private message on the forum.

Wantlists and shelves

A wantlist is of objects, not titles, so it can say that you have the paperback and want the 1965 hardcover. The page that adds a copy adds a want.

Shelves are groups you make yourself, and they are the one thing that crosses catalogs: one shelf can hold the editions, posters and discs tied to the same band. You order the entries by hand, write a note on each, and keep the shelf a draft until you want it seen.

What is still young

The gaps are real, so here they are. There is no import, so nothing comes across from a spreadsheet or another site yet. There is no barcode scanning and no mobile app, and search does not look up an ISBN or a barcode — you find things by title and detail. Your collection does export as CSV, one row per copy, with the owner-only fields in your own download. Old collections from the legacy sites are not linked automatically either: ask on the forum with your old username and your contributions, collection and wantlist get attached.

Sign-in is a forum account at forum.ctlgs.org, one account for the forum and all seven catalogs. The shortest way in is to pick the thing you own most of and add one copy of it. If what pushed you into this was a worry about fire, theft or flood, start with documenting your collection for insurance.