LibraryThing: Catalog your collection

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Anyone thinking of doing it? It's like librarian Friendster, or will be, or something. I have no idea what good it could to do to it, except for geek cred, but part of me is thinking, yes, yes, yes!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

ooh that's tempting

― Matt (Matt), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 23:56 (twenty years ago)

We've been talking about needing a database for all our books and records for ages. Something like this might give us a kickstart, and then maybe we'll stop hanging around bookshops saying "Don't we have this one somewhere?" We have 4 copies of High Fidelity because somehow we never remember, and are always so happy to spot another one.

― Jaq (Jaq), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 02:00 (twenty years ago)

more than 200 books and you have to pay! pfft

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 02:26 (twenty years ago)

Yes. I'm curious whether that will last -- they only opened as beta a week ago.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 02:51 (twenty years ago)

It's too easy to use - 24 books up in less than 15 minutes. But what practical use?

― Jaq (Jaq), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 03:09 (twenty years ago)

Try the free BookDB instead.

― SRH (Skrik), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 04:14 (twenty years ago)

Uh, that doesn't seem to have any of the features that makes LibraryThing awesome.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 05:40 (twenty years ago)

i'm tempted to ditch the social features and write a little gadget for myself to do the same thing -- shouldn't be too hard.

on the other hand, i have a good memory and a moderately organized library so i sort of fail to see the point.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 06:28 (twenty years ago)

Features like "only 200 books"? No.
Features like "show how vastly superior your book collection is"? No.
Features like "strut your funky erudition"? No.

Some of us don't need those "features".

― SRH (Skrik), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 10:14 (twenty years ago)

Well, but more importantly, features like "hooked up to the Library of Congress's database and (eventually, in theory) a large user base so that you only need to enter the ISBN to have all the information included".

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 14:40 (twenty years ago)

Some ideas:

1. Library of Congress and Dewey call numbers, so you can arrange your books according to SCIENCE!

2. Date-by-book collection. She shares my passion for Nabokov and has ten books tagged "sex tips"!

3. Marry by book collection. Discover how many books you'll throw out when your libraries are combined.

Why it's worth $10 if you go over 200:

1. The site has no ads. All other book sites are constantly pelting you with them, selling you stuff you already have and reminding you what "people like you bought," etc. I wanted to avoid the nonsense.

2. The site is fast, but it still takes time to put 200 books in. If you're willing to spend two hours hauling stuff off shelves and typing data in, but you're not willing to spend $10, you've got a funny sense of what your time is worth.

3. You get a free account if you give $50 to Katrina victims.

[Tim, the site developer]

― Tim Spalding, Thursday, 8 September 2005 05:51 (twenty years ago)

Date-by-book collection

Now *that* is a cool idea.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Thursday, 8 September 2005 06:37 (twenty years ago)

Are there friendster-style friends? It'd be useful to know for people you knew in read life, to borrow stuff etc...

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:18 (twenty years ago)

I think date-by-book is the worst idea ever actually. If I went out with people whose book collection I approved of, I would not be married right now. And the Dewey/LC thing (though very appealing!) might only be valuable to people who had a high proportion of non-fiction in their collections.

Still, good work! Though I wouldn't really use it myself because I don't own a lot of books, or not so many that I can't just look at the shelves to see what I have.

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:19 (twenty years ago)

yeah that was my first thought, that one benefit would be seeing what your mates had without having to crouch in front of their bookcases. Otoh you would all have to be up for lending out books, which the older I get the more I think is a mug's game...

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:23 (twenty years ago)

I would be really excited about this if it actually was more dating sitey! Lots of great "do I admit to those old Sandman comics"-type dilemmas, etc.

I'd like to own more books.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:24 (twenty years ago)

Hmm, yeah, point. Still if they registered they had loaned it, on the site! You could give them red "i want this back!" flags, etc!

Possibly we are running away with Tim's vision.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:26 (twenty years ago)

Are you kidding? Handling each book in my collection for just a moment is one of the sweetest parts of moving (actually having to lift the boxes of books and move them is one of the, er, sourest, except that I actually prefer sour to sweet generally, so there goes my metaphor).

Seeing anyone on this board's collection would be awesome. The $50 to Katrina victims sounds excellent but I am barely able to make rent and buy potatoes so... this is a bad time for me.

GP, where are you, by the way?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:30 (twenty years ago)

Anyway I think it's a neat idea for a site, but I wonder how large the target userbase is -- surely the $10 is a great disincentive to keep the site from being used by random people who don't necessarily need catalog software but would play with it if it were free. And that might be intentional. If you were more interested in growth then the fundraiser method might work best ("we need $x by october 30th to pay our bills!"), or at least seems to work for bittorrent sites, but that is a different set-up and I'm not sure how sustainable a model that is, either.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:34 (twenty years ago)

I'm in Seattle! Should I be anywhere?

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:39 (twenty years ago)

I might be in Portland this weekend, come to think of it!

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:43 (twenty years ago)

You've been in Seattle this whole time? Drop me a line if you do come down -- I'm a busy Saturday day and Sunday night, I think, but Saturday night and Sunday day I can be all yours. Or as much yours as you need me to be. Etc.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 8 September 2005 07:47 (twenty years ago)

I don't have much use for the site myself, but I could see plenty of potentially cool stuff that could be done with it.
Groups is what I particularly have in mind. Like if a bunch of friends all add their books and start a "Hooray we are friends" group, they could through a group-portal search in their combined libraries. Would be great for people who'd like to do a bit o' borrowing and loaning from one another.

― Øystein (Øystein), Thursday, 8 September 2005 10:16 (twenty years ago)

hi tim!

― cozen (Cozen), Thursday, 8 September 2005 11:25 (twenty years ago)

Gravel Puzzleworth, if you are in Seattle on Friday night, we should have a FAP of people who don't actually live there. Rock Hardy is coming to town and so am I.

Like the Netflix friends thing and unabashed browsing of the bookshelves of others, I like seeing what other people are reading/watching. Terribly voyeuristic. As with reading ILB, I get exposed to authors and genres I wouldn't necessarily choose otherwise. And I don't mind paying a little for someone else's creativity and time and bandwidth. I'm fairly lazy about data entry, so searching on a few key phrases to bring up all the detail about a book to add to my list with a click (without it being pulled from a commercial site) is a lovely feature.

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 8 September 2005 15:34 (twenty years ago)

$10 = at least three pocket-sized used books on social science from the fifties or sixties!

― Josh (Josh), Friday, 9 September 2005 03:12 (twenty years ago)

Jaq that is a good plan, the FAP! E-mail me.

Chris, are there places to stay on Saturday night that are yours, at all?

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Friday, 9 September 2005 05:40 (twenty years ago)

See e-mail!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 9 September 2005 05:48 (twenty years ago)

This seems to have gotten off-track. Anyway, I tried doing a catalog on xcel a couple of years ago, but stopped after a shelf. I realized that with some 12,000 books or more, I'd never get through it. I was a little more successful with my CDs. If anyone does want to try it, I suggest Dewey. You can usually find some public library that has already cataloged the book, or you can use the CIP often found on the verso of the title page.
All the best

― Mr. Jaggers, Friday, 9 September 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

I had a CD database for a while, and then I stopped buying CDs, and then I started selling them off. So. Be ye warned.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 10 September 2005 02:13 (twenty years ago)

warned that cd databases cause cd selling?

― Josh (Josh), Saturday, 10 September 2005 04:06 (twenty years ago)

Yes. Also I have seen houses listed in databases such as RMLS and they often end up being sold too. Databases = liquidation.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 11 September 2005 00:54 (twenty years ago)

Well I signed up. I'm spittake

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Sunday, 11 September 2005 16:16 (twenty years ago)

Me too. Illiterati

― Jaq (Jaq), Sunday, 11 September 2005 16:43 (twenty years ago)

haha we share 4 books!

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Sunday, 11 September 2005 17:16 (twenty years ago)

Spittake mushrooms!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 11 September 2005 18:01 (twenty years ago)

I'm tempted!

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 11 September 2005 18:20 (twenty years ago)

I signed up

rosemary!

I had no idea!

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 11 September 2005 18:21 (twenty years ago)

it's very easy to add books

I just grabbed half a column from the floor and added them in 10minutes

hardly a show-offy selection

but I'm on as cozen

― cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 11 September 2005 18:32 (twenty years ago)

Whoah, I wish I'd heeded this thread earlier. I'm throwing in the first hundred picture books, under account name Pythia. Will have to pony up the 10 bucks to go any further, but you can get a good scan of my swag accrued in years of books for tots!

― Laurel, Monday, 12 September 2005 01:21 (twenty years ago)

Although LibThing has just crashed and I can't get anywhere with it. Rats and double rats.

― Laurel, Monday, 12 September 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

Collectorz.com's "Book Collector" from http://www.collectorz.com/book/ is the best one out there, IMO. I did a lot of research before I bought it. I've owned it for a couple of years now, and I currently have 1,084 books in my database, which is about half my collection. The program is constantly being updated with new features. It's not free, but it's worth if for the serious collector.

― Roger Sarao, Monday, 12 September 2005 12:42 (twenty years ago)

LibraryThing is my new favorite time-waster. It feels productive, and yet it's just another way to not actually work.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 12 September 2005 19:33 (twenty years ago)

so if I do this will it enable me to meet hott bookish chixors?

― stewart downes (sdownes), Monday, 12 September 2005 19:35 (twenty years ago)

well, you never know - there's a comments gadget in the profile section, room for a photo, and description of your ~~hot bod/massive intellect/desire for moonlight beach strolls~~ library.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 12 September 2005 19:52 (twenty years ago)

Profiles!

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 04:36 (twenty years ago)

I still don't have the $10 to part with.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 04:52 (twenty years ago)

Hi, long time lurker etc but I've signed up on LT as poppycocteau

(I like Wodehouse)

― Poppy (poppy), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 05:27 (twenty years ago)

poppycocteau, you've got a flirty (though entirely bookish) comment already!

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 11:40 (twenty years ago)

Skipping 42 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

When is a journal a book, and when is it just a magazine? Also, comic books?

Jaq: I haven't put the cookbooks in yet! But I might be doing it in a few minutes, since I am insomniac and in the mood for this sort of data entry.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 22 December 2005 09:26 (nineteen years ago)

Hm, even now that I've added my most-used cookbooks, we don't seem to share any. Hm!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 22 December 2005 10:11 (nineteen years ago)

It does seem odd that not one would be common! I have a lot of books about food that aren't cookbooks; I am a bit surprised at how many.

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 22 December 2005 17:04 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

I finally unpacked that box of books in the basement, and added the three books that arrived in the mail yesterday (two by David Melnick, one by Nathaniel Tarn), and now I'm at 998 books!

What are the odds that I hit Powells today?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 26 March 2006 12:20 (nineteen years ago)

998/1000?

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 26 March 2006 12:34 (nineteen years ago)

Precisely.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 26 March 2006 12:34 (nineteen years ago)

1,001! A nice number of books to own.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 27 March 2006 00:03 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

So, LibraryThing has now partnered with ABEBooks. Which sounds like a good thing.

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 16 May 2006 21:01 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

I've had a free account (robster75) on this for ages and finally started adding stuff. I appear to own an awful lot of sci-fi.

― robster (robster), Monday, 26 June 2006 20:23 (nineteen years ago)

Haha! We share 30 books, mostly by Douglas Coupland and Neal Stephenson :)

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 26 June 2006 20:48 (nineteen years ago)

four months pass...

Okay, I'm on that site as Stevienixed.

I'm not going to start putting all my books in it, just use it as a "what am I reading now". (So everyone can snigger at the amount of dribble I read.)

― Nathalie (stevie nixed), Thursday, 16 November 2006 20:11 (nineteen years ago)

I keep forgetting to add the rest of my nonfiction.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 16 November 2006 20:19 (nineteen years ago)

Nath, you're on my watch list :)

Mr. Jaq did his level best to catalogue everything as he was packing it back in September: a worthy goal, but alas a futile one. He did apparently remove all the books we gave away (20 over-filled paper grocery bags). Our count's not likely to change much for several months.

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 16 November 2006 21:48 (nineteen years ago)

If I actually kept the books that I read, I might do this, but I never keep anything. I only own one book, thinking about it.

Looking at other people's collections is fun, though! And the site is really neat.

― mj (robert blake), Thursday, 16 November 2006 22:03 (nineteen years ago)

(I like that this thread is where we initiated the "Seattle FAP of people who don't live there", which resulted in the "Gravel Puzzleworth dressed in cow suit at Fremont Troll" photo series :))

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 16 November 2006 22:39 (nineteen years ago)

I hope that's a good book, MJ.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 17 November 2006 01:57 (nineteen years ago)

None other than the one and only Tristram Shandy.

― mj (robert blake), Friday, 17 November 2006 02:37 (nineteen years ago)

Oh that is good.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 17 November 2006 03:28 (nineteen years ago)

I am wooderson

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 17 November 2006 03:41 (nineteen years ago)

I'm on there too: o_nate

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 17 November 2006 16:31 (nineteen years ago)

raycun

― Ray (Ray), Friday, 17 November 2006 16:37 (nineteen years ago)

I'm there as Amarante. Someone stole my name there.

― Arethusa (Arethusa), Friday, 17 November 2006 18:05 (nineteen years ago)

I have many fewer books than I thought I did.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Saturday, 18 November 2006 00:27 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

Join the ILX Library Thing group! http://www.librarything.com/groups/ilxor

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Thursday, 4 January 2007 18:26 (eighteen years ago)

ILXors love them some F. Scott.

― milo z (mlp), Friday, 5 January 2007 01:51 (eighteen years ago)

Who has the best author gallery? I like the first two lines of mine up to Knut Hamsun, and then they all become rather ordinary. (Haven't put in many books yet, mind you.)

http://www.librarything.com/authorgallery.php?view=missekawasaki

― emil.y (emil.y), Friday, 5 January 2007 21:00 (eighteen years ago)

I never did get around to Librarything, but I've recently signed up for a Vox blog and they let you put your books up there, real easy like. Obviously it's because of their tie-in with Amazon, but it's still cool.

This is my blog. I have just started it. It have not many books on him.

http://accentmonkey.vox.com/

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 5 January 2007 22:11 (eighteen years ago)

We should start a "women looking over mugs of hot drinks" group, accentmonkey.

― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 5 January 2007 22:18 (eighteen years ago)

We so should! I can invite the nice woman I met on myspace. She is a librarian who is into nautical books. We have much in common.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 5 January 2007 23:25 (eighteen years ago)

Are the author galleries always alphabetical? Here's ours: http://www.librarything.com/authorgallery.php?view=illiterati

I like Oliver Sacks photo.

― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 5 January 2007 23:37 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.librarything.com/authorgallery.php?view=Quartz_City

Alan Moore looks a lot like Robert Wyatt

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Saturday, 6 January 2007 07:14 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.librarything.com/authorgallery.php?view=casuistry

That photo of Laurie Anderson simply... isn't Laurie Anderson.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 6 January 2007 08:58 (eighteen years ago)

That photo of Ethel Merman is kinda brilliant, though!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 6 January 2007 09:06 (eighteen years ago)

I made a minimal gesture at starting to make a catalog yesterday - six books. Since many of my poetry volumes were printed before there was such a thing as an ISBN, and I intend to catalog all my poetry first, this promises to be a bit longer of a process than it might otherwise be.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 6 January 2007 18:54 (eighteen years ago)

If it has a LoC number, then that will still go quickly.

If it's older than that, then it will slow down, but it's only if it's hopelessly obscure or not in English that it will creak to a halt.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 6 January 2007 19:50 (eighteen years ago)

LoC numbers they may have, but did the publishers think it was necessary to print this number in the front matter? Hah! Rarely, if ever.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 6 January 2007 20:03 (eighteen years ago)

alan moore does look a lot like robert wyatt there. but, more often, doesn't.

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 6 January 2007 21:53 (eighteen years ago)

Aimless, I've had fairly good luck searching on title/author in the LoC. Also, the Scottish National library, for some reason.

― Jaq (Jaq), Sunday, 7 January 2007 01:16 (eighteen years ago)

I just finished a long session of cataloging and have entered roughly another 90 titles. It was easier than I had feared, but still took almost 2 minutes per title - the average being dragged down by a desire to find the correct edition for each book. Still, that seems like an acceptable pace.

BTW, I find I have only a couple of titles not already held by another member. Truly, these are the book geeks of the net.

― Aimless (Aimless), Sunday, 7 January 2007 20:38 (eighteen years ago)

I've had luck with putting the year in my search field.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 7 January 2007 22:20 (eighteen years ago)

two months pass...

Latest update from the ILX group on LibraryThing

Most commonly shared books (weighted):
-Sign 'O' the times by Michaelangelo Matos (5)
-Psychotic reactions and carburetor dung by Lester Bangs (8)
-Double trouble : Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a land of… by Greil Marcus (3)
-Rip it up and start again : postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds (6)
-Energy Flash by Simon Reynolds (3)
-Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's … by Jim DeRogatis (4)
-Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (11)
-Manual: How to Have a Number 1 the Easy Way by Bill Drummond (3)
-The crying of lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (10)
-The dustbin of history by Greil Marcus (3)

― Elvis Telecom, Monday, 2 April 2007 21:44 (eighteen years ago)

two years pass...

Bump. Join us at http://www.librarything.com/groups/ilxor

― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 9 August 2009 05:11 (sixteen years ago)

I got really listy this year for the first time in a long time by using my LJ at the start of the year to put together a list of fiction I was going to read and then updating it every month or so (by either crossing what I've read or adding new titles, as well as deleting others I just didn't think I was going to find).

Looking through some of the collections now of fellow ilx ppl and there are some really tasty choices on the non-fiction side of things -- def gets me thinking about a non-fiction list.

So I guess that is to say I would be interested in doing this, it could organize my mind as to what I'd look for. Only thing is it takes me away from reading time :-)

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 9 August 2009 10:20 (sixteen years ago)

Is group zeitgeist broken? I just get a blank page.

― abanana, Monday, 10 August 2009 19:08 (sixteen years ago)

three months pass...

does anyone do goodreads.com? i had been keeping written lists of what i read but didn't for 2009 and now i can't find my old ones so i started this. anyway it's free but is librarything better? i want to keep track of what i've read rather than what i own.

― harbl, Monday, 16 November 2009 13:38 (sixteen years ago)

two months pass...

Last week I signed up to everything I could find: anobii, shelfari, goodreads, and dusted off a forgotten librarything account. I'm using it to keep track of what I read rather than what I own as well, and LT is definitely the keeper. I added Goodreads to my quick links, though, because it often has more reviews.

(aNobii has the best iPhone client by a mile, but it's empty otherwise. LT's mobile app is some Windows 3.1 shit)

― stet, Friday, 5 February 2010 03:31 (fifteen years ago)

also so many dormant ilxor accounts!

― stet, Friday, 5 February 2010 03:31 (fifteen years ago)

I should use LT more - feel guilty and intimidated b/c we got rid of a bunch of books and probably didn't remove them. But using it to track reads is a good idea. The last message in the ILXor group is from 2 years ago.

― Jaq, Friday, 5 February 2010 04:50 (fifteen years ago)

I finally got everything out of storage so I can catch up on my cataloging.

― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 5 February 2010 20:11 (fifteen years ago)

I stopped when I no longer had a working computer at home, couldn't put books in anymore. :(

― Let's see how tough Aquaman is once we get him in the water. (Laurel), Friday, 5 February 2010 20:13 (fifteen years ago)

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