TLC 2.0: Casual Cataloging with LibraryThing

By: Meg

2 Oct 2007
I'm a fan of LibraryThing, nearly all my books are listed there, I think the lifetime membership is a bargain, so why don't I feel enthused about blogging about it?

I guess it's because the site has never felt very "sticky" to me. Since adding my books, I haven't had much impulse to go back, or take advantage of the group features. Frankly, I feel so overloaded on 2.0/networking sites that the thought of getting seriously involved in another is a little scary, but just for the heck of it, I subbed to the feeds for the law librarians group new members and new messages.

For me, the great benefit of LibraryThing is in quickly and easily "cataloging" my personal library and having it accessible wherever I am. I don't foresee using it in the academic law library setting, but I have a librarian friend who coordinates the writing center at another college who used it to inventory the center's book collection.

There's a link to my collection in my sidebar, but I don't need a search box there, nor a random book display, which would likely never show anything but books about things I was obsessed with in high school. :)

I recently dabbled with some other book-ish 2.0 sites and didn't care for them. Good Reads seemed to be all about rating (fun!), but then either attributed me with owning everything I rated or, after I imported my LibraryThing catalog, claiming that I'd read everything in it, which I most definitely haven't. I also tried one of the Facebook apps and had similar issues with the way it tried to display things.

What I'd love is a site that combined the ability to catalog one's own books, link in my Amazon wishlist, plus rate anything else I've ever read. Is that too much to ask?!

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