BOOKS.MDB - Books database for Microsoft Access

BOOKS.MDB is a database for detailed information about books. It was originally developed for a collection of mostly old, used books, some possibly collectible, in varying conditions from good to quite bad for various reasons, so it has fields to deal with those states and conditions, as well as for recording where each book is located.

It has queries that can serve as examples to build on, plus 100 records in the books table so you can see how it works and experiment with it, and some pre-filled data in the Binding Types, Conditions, and Modifiers tables that might provide a usable starting point. 

Its tables are:

Authors
Binding types
Books
Conditions
Condition Modifiers
Publishers
Where published
Rooms (where the book is)
Walls (North, East, South, West. Location of the bookcase it is in.)

 The fields of the main table BOOKS include:

Book number (unique ID)
Location (room, wall)
Author
Title
Notes
Publication year
Publisher
Where published
Language
Binding (type)
Condition (condition, with optional explanatory modifier)
Valuation (estimated or actual)
Disposition (what is to be done with the book)

The database demonstrates the use of linked tables in one-to-many relationships and has example search queries.

Downloads:

Download links

Descriptions

US$2.00 (121 KB)

You can expand or modify any aspect of the database. The zip file contains two versions: Access 2003. I believe this will not work in Access 2007 or later.  Access 2.0, Windows 3.1 only. It doesn't have the MakeTable query that the 2003 version has, mentioned in the Notes below. The Buy Now button goes to the PayPal website: If you pay from your PayPal account, PayPal automatically redirects you to my download page.   If you pay with a credit card, the redirect to my download page is not automatic. You will see a "Return to Merchant" button/link on the last PayPal confirmation page. Click that link to go to my download page.   If you cancel the transaction at PayPal with their "Cancel and return to [my email address]" link, you will return to this page you are reading now instead of going to the download page.

Screenshots:

One query shows a few fields for browsing:

These two screenshots would make this page too wide in some browsers, so these are links to the images:

The books table.

A query for editing data shows many fields at once.

Notes:

These are somewhat cryptic notes made to myself about using the database. You might find them helpful after you've studied the database. The original database was one flat table with no linked tables. If you prefer that format, it is easy to recreate it using the MakeTable query that is provided in the database for that purpose.

Notes 6/4/2002

• Pulling repetitive data (authors, publishers, wherepub) into separate tables linked to BOOKS through ID fields (partially "normalizing" the database) didn't decrease the database size; it increased it! But it is more technically correct, and it does facilitate mass editing, and the automatic related-table lookups make it easy to find all the books by a particular author (for example) just by browsing the Authors table rather than by creating a query.
• However, the multiple tables did seriously complicate the entry of new books because in some cases new data entered will be rejected as a result of the complications introduced by all the one-to-many relationships. A new form is needed for data entry, with dropdown comboboxes for finding authors, etc. In some cases, the order in which you enter fields is important, and on the form you should order the fields so that when this is the case, it forces the correct order to be used.
• In maintaining the database, revise the Publisher, WherePub, or Author entries only in the Books-All-UseForEditing query (which has all the "ID" link fields), and be careful. In these fields, I often used the exact text and punctuation shown in the book, which often varies for the same publisher over time and helps to date books with no publication date shown. If you do standardize and regularize entries where the publisher names are abbreviated (by me) or differ only in spacing (which won't interfere with the above), then here is how to do it:

1. If there is an existing Publisher that is exactly the one you want to use, just change the PubID field of the book you want to change.
2. If not, change the Publisher field directly; this will change the entry for that publisher ID in the Publishers table, and thus everywhere it appears in the database, which in this situation is probably what you want.
3. You can periodically use a FindUnmatched query to locate and delete entries in the Publishers table that are no longer used by the Books table.