Thing #12

Library Thing

I set up a Shelfari a few months ago and think LibraryThing is a similar concept but much more detailed. Shelfari too seems a lot more commercial since it has the links now to Amazon with every book to entice you into buying it.

You can see my LibraryThing here:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/kitschqueen

I like the feature of seeing who you have the most books in common with. I also enjoy knowing how many other people have a book. I see it is a fun challenge to think of the most obscure books I have and then discover how many other people have read it or own it.

The integration of LibraryThing tag data into library catalogs is useful because I think users telling each other how to describe a book is very important. Subject headings mean nothing to some of them. The widget would allow us to put something on our website to display our new books. We could also use it internally to rate, review, tag and keep track of the books the staff uses for copyright, instruction, etc.