New Book Tracker Database

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Are you an avid reader?!

I just posted a Book Tracker Database on Airtable Universe!

Airtable

Book Tracker Database - Airtable Universe

Are you an avid reader? This is the book database for you! ​ I've read so many books in my lifetime and wanted a way to start tracking them. Not only the...

I’ve read so many books in my lifetime and wanted a way to start tracking them. Not only the books I’ve read, but the ones I want to read.

​This database includes a place for Title, Book Cover Image, Author, Read Status, Genre, Synopsis, Month and Year Read, Ratings by Star, Your Review of the book, and Own Status.

​It also includes information like Number of Pages in the book, How many times you’ve read the book, Year Published, and ISBN. If you read e-books from your local library, I’ve also included a field for Library Status. This could easily be changed to keeping track of something like where you want to buy the book.

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The Tables included are:

Books
Authors
Genre
Metrics
Status

The Metrics, Status and Genre Tables are rollup fields of all your data at a glance

​Grid Views include:
All Books
Books Read This Year
Status: Currently Reading
Status: Read
Books by Genre
My Rating​

Gallery Views include:
Book Gallery
Book Gallery Read
Synopsis

Form View:
Add New Book

​Right now, I’m just gathering my information from GoodReads to input information like the number of pages, year published, and ISBN. If you are an awesome person who could connect the GoodReads API or any book API to the database, even better! (And if you can, please show me!)

​Hope this helps you keep track of your books in an organized way!

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

• William Styron

[Barry_Margolius]

Thanks so much (both of you) for the quick reply. I’m quickly getting to where I need to be.

I’m on the Plus plan, but I would be willing to upgrade to Pro if that made this process significantly easier. The column approach seems only a tad tedious, but I’m concerned as to whether it would populate the auxiliary tables (like Authors, Genre, Metrics, and Status) properly. Any thoughts?

-barry

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

You’d have to do this for each “Table” separately. First, use the CSV importer on your “Authors” table and import the “Authors” and any info you might have on them from your CSV. Then do the process again for the “Grenre” table, etc.

If the column in your CSV has a one-to-one relationship with the field you want to transfer to in Airtable, then it should not be a problem at all.

You will see an interface where Airtable will show you the Headers of all your own CSV columns and then give you a dropdown menu where you can tell Airtable which field in your Table to match that Header up with - then it will populate that field with the data from the column under that header. If you leave the dropdown blank (don’t select anything), then Airtable will skip that column in your CSV and not import any of it’s data.

[Barry_Margolius]

Thanks. I’ll try it tonight.

[Barry_Margolius]

Anybody have any ideas on this:

1. I go to my old database and choose “Download CSV” and I save that file on my desktop PC.
2. I go to the new Bookshelf database, and drag that file onto the CSV Importer.
3. Airtable replies “Sorry, something is wrong. You must upload a .csv file.”

When I open the CSV file in Excel, it opens fine.

Any ideas?

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Sorry I don’t have that option so I wouldn’t be any help. Maybe someone else will chime in.

[Ptt_Pch]

I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your bookshelves :slightly_smiling_face: :books: !

Creating such a DB was on my list of “Data to regroup on Airtable” :winking_face:
As I’m new here and still discovering things, I didn’t know where to start with this one but with your bookshelves as a base (I still need to deeply explore it though :winking_face: ) it’s a lot clearer in my mind now :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: !

As your base seems very complete, I might ending up to use it instead of creating a new one :winking_face: !

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Awesome! There are so many bases I continue to think of to organize. Just this morning, I created a Gardening one to keep track of all my flowers I’m planting this year.

Hope it helps!

[Ptt_Pch]

Ahah :slightly_smiling_face: !
It’s on my list too :slightly_smiling_face: :yum: :winking_face: !

Maybe one day I’ll use your “Gardening Base” too :winking_face:

Thank you again :slightly_smiling_face: (Helping, this one will :winking_face: )

[W_Vann_Hall]

So, 2018 YTD, thanks to a slightly tweaked version of your base, with assistance from Airtable Blocks.

[Hannah_Wiginton]

Yay! Love the visuals. Looks so much more fun that way. Looks like you will definitely hit 200 by the end of the year! I’m still tracking mine also. A far cry from your number, but thanks to my tablet, ebooks, and this tracker, I’ll be at 25 after this weekend. This is more than I’ve been able to do in a long time!
Glad it’s working for you!