Organizing E-Books

Posted by Cindy on July 19, 2011

I was giddy with excitement when I came across this post about keeping a visual organizer of all your e-books. Melissa and I have struggled much with the fact that it’s entirely too expensive to put our e-books in print. We know how many of you would much rather have a hand-held copy. Luckily, we found it really doesn’t take that much ink to print the units, and we’ve written our own post about how we personally put print and store our units.

However, many people don’t want to print entire e-books and we understand! Like most of you, we’ve purchased PDF files from other companies and stored them on our computer only to forget about them. Out of sight, out of mind. We don’t want you to forget about the NaturExplorers units – they’re far too much fun to stay hidden in the depths of you computer!

Sheri from Scrapbooks and Lapbooks agreed to allow us to post her wonderful idea for keeping a visual file of all the e-books on your computer. She has specifically written her post about the Hands of a Child lapbooks (which we love, too!), but the idea can be used for any e-books you own.

Sheri’s Post…

Ok, so after attending a conference last weekend, and hearing Niki from Hands of a Child speak and show her wares, I got to thinking….I know I have a lot of their ebooks, but which ones and where are they all. Well, yes-I am that unorganized with such things-I have them burned to CDs and on my flash drive…but not all in one spot (now I do, as I made one CD with just those on it). So then I thought-hmm, when I am planning, I don’t want to have to go thru the CD to see what I have…how can I make it so I know which ones I have and have it all neat and tidy? Hmm…then duh! I have had some postcard plastic sheet holders (I used them in my SU demo chick days to showcase the cards I made) and well-why not…

So I right clicked/saved then transfered to MS Word, the pics of the ones I have. I resized em to fit the holder slots, and now I have a nice display and reference of what I have. No more guessing. I can easily slide them out and rearrange to add more down the road too. I did copy em in color, but one could easily do just gray scale. I used what I had laying around…so these holders are bigger than what most would want. I know you can buy those baseball trading card holders (most stores carry them in the sporting goods or in the trading cards area) in a pack, and then you could just size them for those slots. It would save on ink as well as get you more per sheet, due to the smaller size. I also am have a section going for my Home School in the Woods lapbook collection, my Live and Learn Press and the A Journey through Learning lapbooks too. I just haven’t printed those but for one, due to running out of colored ink and time (IE: having to go thru my CDs to find them again…after knowing I had to get my puter diagnosed and then subsequently get it switched out from Vista to Windows 7-I had to do a quick “save it or lose it” CD burn-a-thon…so they are everywhere). SO that is for another day when I have nothing better to do.

Hope this idea helps you organize your ebook collection too…and man, frankly-I could do this for all my ebooks I have. Hmm, another project for down the road.

I have these stored in my Lapbook 3-ring binder. I also have the stuff I copy off from Homeschool Share in tabbed sections behind this-that way if I revisit the stuff, I have it already to go.

That empty spot is for the Hot Diggity Dog cover…I believe it is the current free one for the semi-annual freebie on HOAC..so until that is back on the site…that spot sits all empty like. Oh that is funny-just realized the Galaxies needs to go down to that blank spot and Hot Diggity can go after…guess I need to brush up on my alphabetizing skills-LOL!

I have one more on the back side of this…a couple are the free sample lapbooks (so I only have some sections of it-and plan on just writing “sample” on a slip of paper to slide in on top of them until I buy the full kit). Many of these are ones I got for free, others I bought, and one was a part of the goodie package I got when I renewed my TOS magazine subscription. I am awaiting the States, and the Astronomy one (just purchased them at the conference)…looking to check them out. Fun, Fun!

Thank you, Sheri! Be sure to check out her original post. Others have commented with some of their own organization ideas, too. And below is a little more about her and the FOUR blogs she maintains.

I am Sheri and I have been homeschooling (officially) for 16 or so years. We have 4 children, 2 of which have graduated from our humble homeschool, and are currently wrapping up their Bachelor’s Degrees from local colleges. Our two youngest are 15 and 8. I have been a part of the Old Schoolhouse Review Crew since it’s inception in 2008, and will continue to serve as a First Mate this coming school year, as well. This has given me an opportunity to receive and utilize several different homeschooling products, and blog about them. I actually have 4 blogs that I regularly maintain: one for general HS info, one dedicated to the reviews, one on Lapbooking/Scrapbooking, and one all about Workboxing. I have found I really enjoy blogging, and love meeting new friends via the Cyber-world way. I also have just started a huge project called HOPE Ministries, with my friend Leah. Our goal is to provide encouragement and support to local homeschooling parents. And if that isn’t enough-we are also starting a Charlotte Mason based HS co-op in the fall.

I also like to find ways to organize, and remember the huge collection of eBooks I now am in possession of. The highlighted post is one way I came up with to do just that.

No related posts.