Saturday, August 15, 2009

Thing #19 -- LibraryThing


This was easy for me as I had joined a year ago, thanks to a colleague who recommended it. I have entered 50 of my books, two were nowhere to be found. I'll have to enter them myself. The only issue I have is the many listings people make of their books (or booksellers on Amazon.com more likely) contain errors. So I am often unable to find the exact copy I hold in my hands. This is disturbing. I sometimes add facts in the tags to correct some of the description. I found the blog LibraryThing for Librarians which talked about adding older books and how they are trying to make it easier. The two books I couldn't find surprised me -- one is by David Horowitz, about Berkeley in the 60's -- perhaps he destroyed every copy he could find since he now renounces what he did? I noticed that the biggest group is Librarians Who LibraryThing and that makes sense. Others like to be challenged to read books. I plan to add all 4000 + books to LibraryThing but wonder if I'll ever finish. I couldn't figure out how to display the dewey number, only the LC classification shows in certain views. Some of my books are very popular, but most are fairly obscure. The conversations about books seem to take people all over the map. Book lovers love to recommend books!!
I had already added a link on my blog last week when I saw this was one of the "things". Useful site but I'd like to improve some of the choices. Perhaps I should enter them myself but that takes time!!
I love this image since I need about two rooms to hold all my books. I forgot about the 2000 inherited from my parents as well. I'd like to have a house of books.

No comments:

Post a Comment