Slashdot and LibraryThing
Slashdot is running a topic Solving the home library problem? Happy users—and unhappy ones?—are invited to go on over and "represent."
Current opinion is largely in favor of Delicious Library, that elegant but limited Mac desktop application. LibraryThing hasn't come in for much mention, largely, I think, because Slashdot people are unaware of it. (If only Slashdot were written by librarians, who's awareness of LibraryThing is approaching a saturation point, with each new mention starting "You've probably already heard about it from other people, but…")
Delicious Library is, I agree, very beautiful and works very elegantly. But it's totally desktop bound. Once you enter your books, they just sit there. Worse, it only uses Amazon. That's great if all your books are in print, in an Amazon language, and you don't care about cataloging data quality (or Deweys, etc.). Nor does it have tags...
Current opinion is largely in favor of Delicious Library, that elegant but limited Mac desktop application. LibraryThing hasn't come in for much mention, largely, I think, because Slashdot people are unaware of it. (If only Slashdot were written by librarians, who's awareness of LibraryThing is approaching a saturation point, with each new mention starting "You've probably already heard about it from other people, but…")
Delicious Library is, I agree, very beautiful and works very elegantly. But it's totally desktop bound. Once you enter your books, they just sit there. Worse, it only uses Amazon. That's great if all your books are in print, in an Amazon language, and you don't care about cataloging data quality (or Deweys, etc.). Nor does it have tags...
posted by Tim at 1:36 PM
25 Comments:
Last night I preached the gospel of LibraryThing to a friend working on her Masters in Library Science. I think she has seen the light and will convert others. ;)
LibraryThing lifetime membership: $25
Bottle of Reserve Cabernet: $35
Sitting at home on Sunday with a pile of books and a glass of wine while the family's at church: Priceless.
I posted a comment about LibraryThing when I saw the post during regularly scheduled work avoidance. I noticed someone else commented on LibraryThing as well. I can't get over how fast people catch on to it. My girlfriend who got me my lifetime subscription for xmas has gotten at least 5 other people to subscribe just by showing them my catalogue :)
I don't understand - this site is very nice, but what are you (the two posters before me) paying for? What service does this site provide?
I seeing paying as having two aspects. One I can catalog more books (infinite theoretically), and second I can support someone I see doing something interesting as far as a social library cataloging site.
In general, librarything (free or paid), allows you to catalog your books on the internet, a pervasive medium, that you can access from nearly any web-enabled device.
There is also the social aspect, of connecting with people of similar interests, see recommendations from people with similar taste in reading material, etc.
For example I added two books that I wanted to read, tagged them as toread. I then found other people who also had added that book, and could have asked them what they thought of the book, if they thought it was a to buy, or a book to just borrow.
This Christmas and birthday I plan on sending out my list of books I want, but also sending out the link to my library thing catalog, so people can see a more current list of the books I want, and what books I have.
I would not recommend people use LibraryThing if they don't need to, or forsee themselves not ever wanting to know what books they have from wherever they are, if they don't need to be able to search their libraries, and if are not interested in seeing what other people are reading as well.
I am paying for the ability to catalogue my entire collection of books, to be able to do so even for those books without ISBNs or bar codes, to be able to tag them as I wish, to be able to have full cataloguing data pulled from the Library of Congress or one of thirty-some other libraries, not just in the U.S. but from all over the world.
I am paying for the ability to put reviews and comments in my catalogue, and to see, quickly and easily, reviews by other people.
I am paying to see what other people with similar reading tastes to mine have in their catalogues.
And I am paying for a site that is constantly improving and is responsive to its users needs and desires.
All this for $25 - for the rest of my, or LT's, life - whichever comes first.
What's not to like?
Anonymous [is that you trolling, Spaulding?!] asks what we get out of paying for LT.
First, I agree with retinaburn's suggestion that we're funding a good project. Tim's created something like blown glass out of a fistful of beach sand, adding his own sweat and fire -- and the user community's hot air. :7)
Also, I love having my books catalogged. I just like it.
I intend to print out a copy of my catalog to file away in case of an insurance claim. I bet I coud use a dump of my catalog to fetch price data and figure out the library's value. (Say, Tim, if you need another project, this'd be a neat thing for people to use as "practical value" when rationalizing the sign-up fee.) Unless he's lapped me and it's already in there somewhere!
LT brought me back into physical contact with my books, many of which I hadn't seen since we moved. Following links in the catalogs, I also found dozens more that are still boxed up at my parents' house, 1500 miles away.
Could I have done this without paying for LT? Maybe...but I didn't, and if I had I still wouldn'thave gotten them all.
I have three kids and little spending money, but I gladly stuffed some cash in an envelope and sent it in as soon as I was hooked -- which is to say, as soon as I could tear myself away from the screen and find a stamp.
- wenestvedt
P.S. Tim, as much as I love this site, you've got a baby now, and I think you ought to give him and your missus all the attention you can. We've all got plenty to do, tagging our books and entering cover scans and such until he's, oh, five or six weeks old. :7)
Hey, that's a good strategy. I should troll negative comments to get people riled up!
LibraryThing isn't going to see any major new features for a week or two. Between the baby and some legal work I have to do, I'm crushed.
Soon enough, however, it will resume rapid development. And, I think, they'll be a second programmer....
i am a slashdot reader who decided to come use this site as a result of a comment left by someone on slashdot. ... now, if i could just find something for movies ...
I've just created an account and started adding books thanks to a tiny mention of LibraryThing. :) I don't usually trawl the comments on Slashdot. Divine intervention? ;)
LT is exactly what I needed.
:D
I just found LibraryThing and can't express my pleasure. Having once managed a personal library of over 10K books, I have used many tools.
It is also great to find you by accident just moments before you get "discovered" by SlashDot. Being a part of another project that is already over due for a SlashDotting, enjoy the last few minutes of relative obscurity. And, of course, congratulations on a wonderful tool.
I'm considering becoming a lifetime member. I have way too many books. Here's a question. If I load my library, will there be way for me to download all the information to my computer?
Rod
What service does this site provide?
I use it for a number of reasons, actually, Anonymous.
First off, as members of LT know, I collect different editions of 'The Night Before Christmas' by different illustrators. Friends and family from various parts of the country love to buy copies for me as they search through second-hand shops and used bookstores. By keeping my collection online (and up-to-date), they can print out a list of my collection, complete with cover scans, to keep track of what I already have. It will cut down on duplicates. (By the way, older editions of the book don't have ISBN numbers/bar codes or LC numbers. Having multiple entry methods means I can choose the most efficient method to enter the book.)
I also use tags to tell me the locations of books. I have an abbreviation for each room and number every bookcase, which I enter as a tag. It is easy to change, and it is both specific enough to get me close and general enough that I don't have to be overly careful about placing books back on the shelves.
LT has been an aid to culling books I know longer want. Any duplicates are easily spotted.
I like to read series. LT keeps track of what I have in the series. It's useful to print off the list when buying the next installment, especially since their names tend to be similar!
I've recently added a LT widget to my webpage so friends can see what I'm reading. Since we are all readers, we like discussing books. If we are both on LT, we can select a book from the other's library to add to our collection. If we already own the it, we can use this feature as a shortcut to entering the book. We may want the book and can tag it as a book to read in the future. Clicking on a bookcover provided by Amazon will take you to Amazon to order.
If a friend borrows a book, you can enter that information as a tag.
If you have books from overseas, you can check with the libraries there for information. I've used that feature, and it is a wonderful time saver.
I have also printed out a list for insurance purposes.
Tim keeps adding new features, which I'm sure I'll find useful. Don't tell Tim, but I consider the lifetime subscription price a bargain!
I'm sure others can give you reason why they use LibraryThing, but these are mine.
Hope that helps.
I absolutely love librarything - and it's the best 25 dollars I've ever spent. I think the main reason I love it, aside from all the widgets, is that it lets me see the books in my library in ways I can't on the shelves.
I took the anonymous comment about what we're paying for to be a question about what the difference is between a paid account and a free account (though I could be wrong about that).
In case my interpretation is correct:
A free user can only log up to 200 books, whereas paid users have no limits on how many books they can log.
I do agree with the other responses though. I didn't just pay for my account because I wanted to put more than 200 books on it. I wanted to make sure LT stayed around!
~Neurotica
Pastor Rod: 'will there be way for me to download all the information to my computer?'
Yes: go to extras - Export Data
Export all records as text (CSV format, ideal for Excel).
Books with a book information longer than 180 characters are split to more than one line, but I'm sure that will get fixed.
-----
Steve Ruddell: 'now, if i could just find something for movies'
Tim is planning to extend LibraryThing to CDs and DVDs, so stick around ;-)
sunny
Nothing would induce me to spend time cataloguing a book collection with a software program on my computer just for the sake of maintaining a record. But the idea of sharing your collection online and being able to browse through the collections of those with similar interests, pick up recommendations and so on -- now that's an elegant idea.
Lots of stuff might be ok if you are a yank, or only have more recent books, or both.
If not, library thing seems to be the only decent option. Plus you can get to it anywhere, being a website, and it has a nice export for carrying around with you!
The fact that you can get to LibraryThing anywhere is a big plus for me. I used to have a problem with buying books, in that I'd accidentally buy ones I already have. Now with LibraryThing, I can just go to the nearest internet-enabled computer and check my library before I buy anything or not.
I haven't managed to enter all my books yet, but it's already managed to save me from buying duplicate copies a couple of times. :)
This is something I wouldn't get with an offline program like the Delicious Library mentioned in the original blog post, as I would only be able to use that at home, rather than whenever I may need it (such as at work, when I'm most likely to buy new books).
Well, in a rudimentary sense, I'm paying for extra server space to catalogue my collection for my lifetime or that of LibraryThing. And my initial reason for cataloguing is to maintain a record of my collection for insurance purposes - something I still highly recommend. Had LT been crafted only to suit that need, I still would have paid.
What I have greatly come to enjoy, like so many others, is the way that the LT allows me to see relations between works through tagging. I can also sort out groupings of texts without having to physically find each one - quite the relief when books are all over the house.
All that being said, it's so rare to find anything this worthwhile on the 'Net that I'm willing to shell out a miniscule $25 to support it. Thanks for your hard work, Tim, Abby & Crew!
Well for me - I've tried a lot of other software for maintaining a catalogue of my books. I didn't find one that was suitable. Admittedly I haven't got a mac so I haven't looked at Delicious - but from the screen shots it looks like it would not suit me either. LibraryThing isn't perfect but it is closer to meeting my needs than most other things. The areas in which I want something different are on Tim's development plan (although I don't know how far down).
Here's a use for LibraryThing I haven't seen someone bring up: someone upthread mentioned book collecting. I'm not a serious collector, but I do have a knack for ferreting out the one edition in an entire row of antique shops that happens to cost $5 and happens to be worth $500. Anything from otherwise nondescript covers hiding printine Gustave Dore prints, to early Dr. Seuss illustrations completely unsuitable for the eyes of minors. (That's my favorite find. I'll never look at cuckoo clocks the same way again.)
All of this has meant that I have inadvertently accumulated a collection that makes my renter's insurance company nervous. They refused to cover me anymore until I catalogued my books. I take pictures of anything worth more than $500, but in the event of a disaster or theft, through LT I have a basic list of what my policy needs to replace. I previously bought Readerware for this, but I like the social aspect of LT so I'm switching over.
Delicious Library is way too expensive for what it offers. Amazon.com should give it out for free. I appreciate the hard work put into LibraryThing. The lifetime membership is also very nice. I like that I can archive my library collection on it and also tag the books I've read from year to year.
I do wish the social aspect of LibraryThing were more like Flickr, where groups could be formed to discuss certain books, topics, or themes.
Maybe if a company like Yahoo would put some serious money into LibraryThing it could more easily expand.
Thank you for this site and service.
Oh, I guarantee they'll be groups in the next few months, and discussion boards.
I don't see Yahoo funding LibraryThing. I'd prefer a partner who cared about books, not to mention one that didn't collaborate with the Chinese government to find and imprison people for blogging about democracy.
LT is great and I wish to use it more but I can't cause I have reached my 200 limit. Wanted to pay the $25 for unlimited book entry. But I can't cause I'm living in the areas where Paypal don't provide their services. Bank wire transfer and cheque isn't an option because our bank fees are high. Is there any possiblity LT is going to accept credit cards in the near future or so?
PayPal takes credit cards. Did you check?
If you want to mail it, let us know. We'll put you to paid/pending until it arrives, and you'll be able to add.
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