Another distraction for book lovers

[Chris G]

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I found a new site recently (still in beta). It can be a little addictive at first, but if you have a lot of books...

http://www.librarything.com


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[miss carol]

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I found a new site recently (still in beta). It can be a little addictive at first, but if you have a lot of books...

http://www.librarything.com

Thank you! This is such a great resource...and a bad influence. It's similar to Book Crossings (an exchange website) but seems to feature better titles and more variety. My job has now either been made easier or more difficult...I'm not sure which.

[Chris G]

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Well, have you tried uploading your own library yet?


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[miss carol]

No no. I'm at work. I'll get to it, I'm sure. Right now, um, I'm wrapping my head around some potentially amazing news, which also stands the chance of being stuntingly status quo. Meanwhile, I'm tooling about this Library Thing thinking, "Yep, that's on my list. So's that..." and wondering if I'll live long enough to get through it all! Thanks for the distraction :)

[steve-o]

This is great, thanks Chris. I only wish I had heard about this a couple of weeks ago, while I'm standing in the bookstore realizing I forgot my "To Buy" list and completely blanking on anything on it.

[Mixmaster Shecky]

Crap - just when I think the intertubes can't waste any more of my time, something like this comes along.

Sigh...

[Chris G]

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Yes, my wife has made a good and correct observation concerning just how much of my time this week has been monopolized by this particular site... and I'm only approaching about half my books.

You can upload books faster by simply using their ISDN number.

It's the obsession about getting the correct book cover art that can sometimes be time consuming. More than half the time LibraryThing already has the cover in their database. They already references Amazon's inventory of book covers, and then the site keeps an amended inventory of alternate covers that other users have uploaded. When the correct cover is still not available, I find that a Google image search, then an eBay book search will usually net me 90% of the book covers images I need (even a few relatively obscure foreign titles). When that fails, I Google variations on the book title and skim sites myself. Most covers I find quickly. When I first started, I spent a little too much time trying to find alternate covers. Now, if I cannot find one within five minutes, I just move on. It will take me less time to just digi-photograph the dozen or so books that are missing covers, all together at the same time, once I've cataloged all the books.

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[MF]

This is a very cool site...I'm not sure I should have shared it with my better half. Between her bibliophilia and the kids I don't believe I'll be seeing much of my wife for the next few weeks...

[miss carol]

For some wierd reason, some ISBNs aren't included in the database. Curious. Perhaps those issued by the Canadian agency aren't yet recognized; Librarything does know those issued by the Library of Congress. I shall dig further...

um...is there a Librarything Anonymous yet?

[Chris G]

> ...some ISBNs aren't included in the database.

They don't have their own database. They cross reference a few others that are publicly available, including Amazon, and pull in their data.

> um...is there a Librarything Anonymous yet?

Anonymous? Well, I would guess it always can be if you don't use a username that reveals who you are. Also, there is a "public / private" setting for your whole account, so that nobody else even sees that you exist, and only you or people you give your URL to can see your library. I notice that some books I own that only have a few owners, may say there are 7 people who have the book, but when I scroll down to the list of owners, only 4 names are there. The other 3 are obviously hidden accounts.