SearchResearch Method: Control-F for reality (finding books on your shelves)

[Dan Russell]

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

SearchResearch Method: Control-F for reality (finding books on your shelves)

 Ever lose a book on your shelves? 

I spent an hour tearing my personal library apart in a desperate search.  Ever happen to you? You know, the search for the one book you know you have, but can't find? 

Happens to me all the time.  I have several bookshelves, totaling around 200 linear feet of books (61 meters).  And that's not even counting the bookshelves in secondary storage in the garage.  

So, like many of you, I find myself searching my personal stacks for a book by hand, one at a time.    

This seems like a classic SearchResearch problem.  There must be a better way.  

Yes, I could create a personal card catalog or personal book database.  And, admittedly, making such a thing used to be a huge hassle.  (It's much easier these days with personal catalog apps Libib or LibraryThing.)  

New Solution--Use AI to Search Your Shelves: I was playing around with Gemini's text recognizer the other day when it occurred to me that maybe we could use Gemini to scan our bookshelves.  

Here are two images of MY book collections.  (Don't judge me for neatness, organization or content!)  

Yes, I know there's a box labeled "Books to Read."  Don't judge.

Here's what I did to allow me to Control-F for a book on my shelves.  Just uploaded the images, and asked:  

That was pretty damn impressive!  

If you look at the images, the text on the spine of "Field Guide.." is partly hidden by the book above.  

Not only did the AI find the book, but Gemini also gave me directions to the book ("..top shelf, far right-hand side, third book down, with a blue spine, directly underneath Birds of the San Francisco Bay Region").  

That gave me the notion to ask more about this collection of books. 

This list is complete (I checked!) and as we saw, Gemini gives general directions to the locations of the piles and shelves.  Here you see "Image 1 (Wooden shelves)", but later on Gemini tells me where the other books on with directions like "Top Shelf (center horizontal stack)" and "Stacks and boxes (left stack)."  

That's about as good of directions as you can expect.  

What's more, you can ask questions about your collection: 

Or you can ask about your book organization: 

And you can ask for some personal reflection... what does Gemini think about you as a reader? 

FWIW, it seems Gemini gave me a pretty accurate analysis of my reading habits as seen by these shelves.  It noted that I am: 

"...obsessed with how humans organize and find information" along with "...you appear to be an academic or a specialized researcher (possibly in Computer Science or Cognitive Science) who is deeply concerned with the "User Experience" of reality. You want to know how to navigate the flood of information in the digital age without losing touch with the biological reality of the physical world."

Gemini kindly concludes this bit of analysis with a suggestion:  

"Recommendation:  Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake? It treats fungi as a biological information-processing network, which fits perfectly in the center of your Venn diagram."  

Hope you find this a useful method to let you manage your physical inventory of books. 

Question for you:  I have to admit I've only done this with 7 different photos of my shelves and stacks. I'll be curious if you try it with 20 or more images.  Will Gemini track them all?  Will it be as useful?  Let us know in the comments! 

Also let us know if you ask any interestingly different (and revealing) questions about your bookshelf! 

SearchResearch Lessons

1. Taking pictures of your bookshelves can be incredibly useful for locating otherwise lost items.  I have to admit that I did this initially out of desperation.  I'd lost a book I knew I had (the aforementioned Roger Tory Peterson "Field Guide")... and was able to find it.  

2. Keep your book spines visible.  I later noticed that a couple of my books don't appear in this list because they were occluded by pieces of paper drooping down from above.  Finally, a real rationale for keeping your spines visible!  

Keep searching. 

--

Daniel M. Russell 

Check out my book:  The Joy of Search (2019) 

Available in fine bookstores (and online) everywhere.