My Library

When I first started in an Architects office, my father purchased a copy of Barry for me one of the best construction books availavle at that time 1969, it was spiral bound and had a lot of realy good sketches to copy. From that date building my library was almost an obsession, I would visit any old book shop looking for any construction book.

I never paid much for any of my books till I started writting Mitchells, then my sights were set on getting most if not all Mitchells books printed, although many of the later editions were updated by others, with me being the last in the line currently.

I suddenly realised that books were not the only source of knowledge, magazines has much to offer, the AJ was a gold mine of information, and I started to collect details and information.

I once came across a small builders diary, that had a section on information for the Painter and Decorator, again a gold mine that I did not know exististed and it was free.

So my advise to any student in this industry, is to collect any and all books on construction, not only will it help you through College, and University, but the rest of your career.

I tend to forget whats in my book collection so use Zortero to catalog all my books and papers, I do also add worth while websites especially if I want to or need to cite them in papers.

Todays video, is a walk through of my library, spread across several rooms with my main working collection in my study.

It would be wrong of me not to mention Apple Notes my electronic library, Books and paper I collect as original, but some of the paper gets scanned, often because its some one else’s or I want to add to it with my own notes or web clips.

In fact my Apple Notes collection might well be bigger in word count than my books and paper.

One area I am becoming interested in is eBooks, I buy or free download a lot this way, and mostly they are technical books of an age from Guttenburg (

https://www.gutenberg.org ) which are free. Marking sections of text for it to save with my notes at txt is easy, and available to add to Apple Notes. For printed books, I am exploring the use of Apple Notes to copy sections of text to which I add my own notes, source, page No etc. In both I add a number of hash Tags to locate the subjects.

I watch a lot of Reels, or short and save these to Apple Notes, often again adding a lot of notes and thoughts.

The only problem is what to do with it all when I am gone. This I am splitting into two distinct sections, my Apple Notes and my book Library. My Apple notes are a mix of personal and general references, so this is going to my sons to share, but my books need thought, I do not trust libraries, they think only of shelf space, and have a habit of throwing out old books to make way for new or updated editions. I hope I have a few years left to solve this problem, I’ll let you know, but a specialist library is high on a very short list.