That LibraryThing
November 19th 2006 19:31
Image:LibraryThing.com
OK readers, hands up everyone who wants a fast, simple, fun, inter-active way to keep your reading library organised. Go on, you know you all do! How many of you have little scraps of paper, note books or torn-from-newspaper articles that you have to delve through to find reference to that last really good book you read. It all just becomes too much trouble and we end up throwing them all out and starting again!
Well, I’ve found something on the net that can end all that. It’s called LibraryThing and it’s really worth a look. A fellow librarian put me on to it (she knows how much I read) and it could well be the librarian in me that is so attracted. But seriously, I have never found a site easier or quicker to use. You sign up (literally) in seconds and away you go, adding your books to your library shelf. It can search Amazon.com, Library of Congress or 60 other libraries around the world to find your book. Trust me to read a book that is not entered on any of these catalogues, but that’s OK because you can manually add.
Once you get your shelf up and running you can organise them a number of ways - title, author, date, even by a rating system. And then there’s more fun to be had (I do worry about myself sometimes). You can also connect with other people who have read the same book/s through talk forums, there is a blog written by Tim Spalding the creator of LibraryThing, which is very informative, and you can write reviews, make suggestions or just roam amongst the books, and authors. You can view other people’s shelves and they yours, or you can keep it private. My library is still under construction at the moment, but you can have a look at what I’ve done so far at www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=jody.
You can view my shelf by list, which gives you all the info – author, title, year, rating etc. Or you can click on the cover view and just have the book covers displayed. One option that is interesting is to have a look at what other people, who have the same book as you, also have in their library. The similarities to your own library can be quite uncanny. Spooky even.
Some of the statistics are staggering. There are members with over 10,000 books on their shelves! And some of the lists available include - top 25 books, top authors and most reviewed books. This is a book lover’s heaven! It is completely free to use, up to 200 books, then you can pay $10 a year, or $25 for life membership. Very affordable, and Tim feels this will enable him to “recline all day on an enormous pile of gold.” HaHa. I like his sense of humour. Hang on, how many members were there? Boy, am I in the wrong business!
So, if you’re an organisational junkie like myself, who loves playing with this sort of thing, pop in and have a look. There is a straight forward tour of the site that is worth doing and won’t have you chained to your computer for hours. In fact, that’s what I like about LibraryThing. You can zoom in, logon, add a few books, take a quick look around and zoom out again. A real pleasure by some internet site standards and I think its simplicity and speed could well become a model for libraries in the future.
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Comment by katyzzz
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Sounds a bit like Orble to me.
For a little light relief, have a look at my youTube, in Pink, under Ms Paint Art.
c u soon,
katyzzz