An idle mind*

Recently I’ve had a lot of time to catch up on my (mostly chick-lit) reading. This also means I’m putting all my library memberships to good use (all 4 of them) -
• The library for the city where we now live
• The library for the city where I now work
• The library system for the general area we used to live and work in
• The library system for the general area we now live in

(During one of my recent crazy “putting books on my hold list” sprees, I also signed up for a card at the library in the city where I volunteer a few hours a week. Luckily I later found the same book while browsing one of my “regular” libraries, so I didn’t bother picking up my library card from the other place.)

For a while I kept track of all my books and videos the usual way. They would stay in the backseat of my car till the library emailed me a courtesy notification a few days before they were due. And then, there would be a mad scramble to either read, renew or return whatever I could. Till one day, inspiration (or boredom) struck. Now I have my own tracking system in excel.

The Summary
This is where I get an overall picture of what I have checked out and when they’re due.
From here, I can also link to the library website to check my account. I can also click anywhere in the table showing the breakdown to get more details on those specific items.

The Details
This is a list of all the items I have checked out and when they’re due. The light blue shading is for books I’m done reading and the light yellow is for the ones I’m currently reading.
The purple shading in the “Due Date” column marks due dates that are in the next 3 days.
The pink in the last column tells me I need to read / renew / return those items – it’s a combination of items with a due date in the next 7 days and status of “Not yet started” or “Work in Progress”.
Needless to say, I'm very pleased with myself. I have also realized I might be spending more time "refining" my tracking sheet than I spend actually reading all those books I borrowed!


* is, in my case, apparently an excel workshop!