Why I like LibraryThing

July 24, 2008 · Filed Under websites

When I decided to start a blog about tips and tools to enhance your reading life, it was a no-brainer that LibraryThing would get a mention early on. It will probably pop up now and then in the future too.

I assume that most people who are keen about books and have been active internet users for a while will already be well aware of LibraryThing. For this reason, and the fact that you are better of visiting the site to learn about the ins and outs, I am not really going to write a review, or overview of the site. Instead I will talk about some of the main reasons I like and use it.

For those who are not familiar, here is a brief rundown. LibraryThing is a website that allows you to catalogue your books. Of course, there is a lot more to it than just keeping track of your books. It has a strong social side, with users able to tag and review books as well as join in forum discussions. If you have not used LT, the best way to see what it does is to go and play.

Now, for the main reasons I like LT.

It is scalable.
You can use LT to whatever degree you choose. You can simply add your books so that you have a record of what you own. Or, you can add all your books then spend time tagging, rating, and reviewing them. You can participate in any number of forums and try to make friends with people who like the same books you do. You can scan and submit covers for books that are not yet in the LT database, you can provide details about books that nobody else has added. You can get in on their early reviewer program.

Although I am a big fan of LT, I would not consider myself a particularly heavy user, especially when it comes to the social networking side of things. Technically, LT was designed for people to keep track of books they actually own. I don’t even use it purely for that. Like many other library users, my LT catalog reflects books I have read, not necessarily books I own.

It is serious about cataloguing, open access, and user input
LibraryThing is not just about allowing people to keep track of their books. It is about adding what you know about those books to the collective knowledge of the community. This collective knowledge is then open and accessible to anyone. It is communal and open cataloguing.

The open, social side of LibraryThing is at its core. When you add a book, your tags become part of the larger body of information LT has about the book. If you add reviews, ratings, author photos, or other details, these also contribute to the body of data about this book. It therefore knows things like what users have a large number of books in common with you, and how other books have been tagged. Data like this can be used to recommend books that you might like - books owned by other people with similar reading habits, or books tagged in similar ways.

The crew at LT take the cataloguing side of things very seriously. They interact with the world of library professionals and are serious about being a part of the future of cataloguing, and about their users being part of it too.

It is easy to use
LT would not be nearly as popular if it was clunky and difficult to navigate. Adding books is dead easy. You can search the Library of Congress, Amazon (all five sites), and 255 other libraries around the world (including the National Library of Australia). You can search by author, by title, or even by ISBN. LT even sell cute little barcode readers so you can just scan the ISBN on the back of your book.

You can then add tags straight away. My one little disappointment with LT lies here. I would love to see the process of adding tags a bit more like Delicious. When posting a site on Delicious you can see tags you have previously used, and also see the tags used by other people for that particular site. I would love something like this on LT. If I don’t add any books for a while, I have a tendency to forget whether I have been using “junior” or “children’s”, “science fiction”, “sci fi”, or “scifi”, and so on. I would also be curious to see in advance how other people have tagged it. However I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reason for this feature not being there. Aside from that, adding tags is simple.

Once your book is added, searching or browsing for it is also straight forward. Then you can easily look at your information about the book, or the whole community’s information, You can select or upload a new cover image. You can link straight into forum discussions that reference the book. It is all there, well laid out and easy to use.

It is constantly being improved
The LT crew are not resting on their laurels. They seem to be very busy beavering away tweaking the service and playing with new features and different ways of doing things. I love this. I think this is evidence of their passion for what they are doing. They are not just trying to build a business.

I’m sounding like a bit of a fan boy here aren’t I?

It is fun
Seriously. If you are reading this, you presumably like books and probably enjoy playing around online too. With LT you can look at a screen full of your book covers. You can chat with other people about those books. Browse the libraries of people with whom you have a large number of books in common. Get suggestions for other books. You can make a mosaic image of your covers. You can enter competitions by photographing a pile of books. Go and play - you’ll see what I mean.

It works
Everything else would count for squat if the site didn’t do what it was meant to. But it does. It works. I’m not on LT every day, but I can’t remember it being down when trying to log in. I can’t remember a bad link. It has always found books I expect it to find. Functions I have wanted to use always work for me.

So there you have it. My rave about LibraryThing. There are a bunch of other sites that offer a similar service to LT, but to be honest I have never felt the need to try them out. LT was the first one I used and I struggle to see what benefit I could gain by shifting. Maybe I’ll sign up and play with the others one day just to see, but I am extremely happy with LibraryThing.

So if you haven’t done so already, go and join LibraryThing and have a play, or visit my profile or library.

Comments

2 Responses to “Why I like LibraryThing”

Eric Herberholz on July 24th, 2008 1:52 am

Thanks for tweeting about this post. Any suggested readings for how to easily setup my own Library Thing?
jonathan on July 24th, 2008 7:44 pm

Eric - glad you found me through twitter. I would suggest you simply go to librarything.com. The front page has a link to “take the tour” which gives you a good basic overview of the site.

Joining is dead easy - they just ask for a username, password and email.

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