The Lindfield Victorian House Museum, situated in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, has arrived in the modern computer age!  The entire content of the house museum is being systematically catalogued. The books in the library, containing and estimated 3000 books, are now being categorised and captured onto a custom database. The database lists for instance, the Title, Author, the name of the Series (if applicable), Volume number (if applicable), Publisher, Year of publication, ISBN number and so on.

With the books in the library being of historical value, the data format used, is such that virtually any computer application will be able to read the information now or in the future.

Also on the library shelves are various other publications such as pamphlets and maps. These will be captured as well.  The cataloguing is rather a time-consuming process as the books are individually removed from the shelf, carefully cleaned (as per the British Library’s Preservation Advisory Centre’s guidelines), the information captured after which the book is returned to the shelf.

By recording the books in a computer catalogue, book titles are preserved for future generations and become easily searchable for reference purposes.

Museum contact details:

Lindfield Victorian House Museum

72 Richmond Avenue, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, 2092

Phone: (011) 726 2932

Web: http://lindfield.wix.com/museum 

e-mail: lindfieldhousemuseum@outlook.com