I got books all over the place, and that’s partly by design. I tend to want to have a book within reach wherever I am, so I typically have a few at the living room, around the bedroom, at the car (some nearby and some at the back), and a few at work.
Of course, like most avid readers, I have attempted to catalog my collection. I remember setting-up a little dBase thing when I was a kid, maybe even tried to use FoxPro (but that particular attempt I really can’t remember for sure). Of course there was the Excel sheet attempt.
When the internet came along, you used online tools. I first tried it on Amazon.com (the obvious starting point), but the thing just wasn’t built with cataloging in mind, at least in the beginning (and Amazon.com has kept it’s basic layout pretty much stable). It’s also annoying that the different versions/editions of the same book are treated too separately, efforts to combine them (like links to various editions) are inconsistent.
Now, online social cataloging is the thing. You just can’t catalog online without the ability to add “friends”. I think I tried GoodReads first, based on an invite from a friend. I tried it a bit, but it just didn’t take me in at the time. Then, I got a Shelfari invite from another friend (or was it the same one?). I kinda liked it a little better, but it not by a lot. It had a nice little shelf feature, which I liked, but it also felt clunk to use, and it was real slow.
Yesterday, as I was giving Glue a test run (amusing so far) by browsing around Amazon.com, I noticed that some people checked-out certain books via LibraryThing. Curious, I took a looksee. Given that the previous two social book cataloging stuff hasn’t gained any traction on me yet, I decided to give LibraryThing a test run as well.
LibraryThing is supposed to be in beta right now (it went live in 2005! Really?! It’s still in beta? Or did it re-beta itself?), but at first glance, it seemed to have most of what I was looking for. It didn’t have an exact shelf thing which I liked in Shelfari, but it does have the ability to display your library book as the book covers, which is practically the same.
More important than the exact rundown of features (the major ones being avaliable in the others anyway), I liked the UI better than the two others. MOST of what I wanted to accomplish I was able to do intuitively and easily, which scores big points with me. Oh sure, there are nitpicks, like the fact that I can’t click on a book cover when I list my library in book cover mode, but things like that are bound to be easily added in the future. More importantly, I found that the common things I wanted to do (importing, adding, listing, tagging, rating, and searching) was easier to me.
This was the first book cataloging service I felt like obsessing over, which is a good sign.
One major caveat, LibraryThing has a 200 book limit for free users! That’s pretty annoying given that the other two (and even Amazon.com) has no tracking limit and they’re all free. There’s a US$10(+)/year option, and a US$25 lifetime option. I don’t understand why one would opt for the per year thing, unless the extra US$15 is just too much, or people don’t see the site being around in the long run (in which case, why bother?). Also, Amazon.com acquired Shelfari. LibraryThing is 40% owned by AbeBooks, which is being aquired by Amazon.com (or has it already been acquired?). Will we see a feature merge in the future?
In spite of this, LibraryThing has managed to interest me more than the previous ones I tried. Let’s see if that’s gonna stick.
In the meantime, why don’t you take a gander at my current library? I wonder how many of the books from my younger days I’ve left out…
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