[saithir]

Sometimes we definitely want 'items' though, so for example I am in a physical bookstore and see a book I might be interested in, so I buy it, to find out later back home that I already have the very same book - and edition - already. It's a scenario that anyone with some amount of books definitely encountered multiple times, I know I did it myself a few times. :)

Ability of an ISBN search of my collection would have helped me in this case - scanning a barcode is easy enough task to accomplish.

And even if I had a different edition, the resulting title from searching for a different edition would be enough to help me figure out that I should not buy a book I already own.

[eudamoniac]

Genuinely how is this possible? I have nearly a thousand ebooks and I'm certain whether I have or don't have one, because I obtained it deliberately. Are you buying books by the foot or something?

[joemi]

I'm not the person you were asking but it's happened to me too, with physical books, not e-books. I don't know if I can explain how it happens. I'd say that me not knowing the exact content of my bookshelf is similar to me not knowing the exact content of my fridge and pantry. There have been a few times when grocery shopping where I can't remember if I have a less-frequently-used ingredient (like cream of mushroom soup) but I'd like to make something using that ingredient soon, so I buy the ingredient, and then when I get home I find that I did have a can in the back of the pantry that I bought a year ago and the expiration date hasn't arrived yet. Oh well.

If you can really remember every single one of your nearly a thousand ebooks that you've bought, that's both impressive and baffling to me.

[yial]

Not the person you’re replying to but backing up what you’re saying - I read a lot of fiction for pleasure, I can say with some assurance whether I’ve read a certain fiction book, or, any book I’ve read for pure pleasure. (Though as time goes on and I get older… I once started reading a book and about 15 pages in realized I had read it before )

As a hobby, I do a lot of wood working. Recently I was acquiring some books on wood finishes. I accidentally bought one book three times - not all at once but over a several year period. I realized this while trying to organize.

Mainly because they can have very similar / generic titles, and be by different authors. Since I’m using them as a reference, even if I know the author, I can’t always remember if I own this book by them or maybe I own this book with very similar title by a different author.

[joemi]

Oh yeah I can definitely remember all the books I've read. The only ones I've ever bought twice were ones I hadn't yet read but had sitting on my shelf for a while with the intention of reading sometime.

[f0cus10]

Faced this problem multiple times before. Tbf, I did buy and subsequently transport enough books in luggages to restore a country's economy

[saithir]

I just don't find remembering an exact list of all of them a worthy information to keep in my brain. Maybe if I had a dozen, but between me and my wife we do read much more than that. I also don't remember all of the contents of my steam games list, because what's the point? I can always look it up quickly.

I did eventually solve my duplicate book problem by making ourselves a searchable list I can access remotely, so now I can just look it up when I'm at the store.

Being deliberate about obtaining them isn't even remotely related to any of that.

I'd imagine this is also more specific to them being physical items, since it's much easier and obvious to look up an ebook if you just look at a list of files wherever you keep them.