Question

I’m designing a library management database, i’m stuck on should i separate library resources(e.g. Books, Videos, Audios) to three tables or only one table contains all resources information, it’s because most of the columns of them are same.

**Books**
id
title
author
isbn
...

---

**Audios**
id
title
author
isbn
duration
...

---

**Videos**
id
title
author
isbn
duration
cast

Answer 1

I would keep the common columns in a single table and separate them based on a type:

library_items {id, type_id, title, author, isbn}
item_types {id, name}

The type table would contain Book, Audio, Video.

Then having additional tables that contain the additional columns:

library_audios (id, duration}
library_videos {id, duration, cast}