Comments on: A brief look at Librarything

By: ErkDemon

ErkDemon — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:17:34 +0000

I used LibraryThing to catalogue my Mum’s book collection – she had books spread over three rooms, sometimes stacked on the shelves two deep, and some with almost-illegible spines. Some of those books had “family” importance, some books had already been passed down to other family members, some hadn’t, and it was getting difficult to know exactly what was there, and where it was. LibraryThing sorted it.

It’s the best at what it does, it’s free, and it’s not locked into a major vendor like MS or Amazon who might screw it up at some future date for corporate advantage.

The one criticism that I’d agree with (in 2009) is that LT really ought to also be able to catalogue CDs and DVDs, too. These things have product barcodes too, and it’d be great to be able to have books, CDs and DVDs all cataloguable under one umbrella, rather than having to use two or three different sites and interfaces.

By: CarolA

CarolA — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 05:00:11 +0000

I must say I agree with Branko about my lack of enthusiasm for making an inventory of my library. I decided to to prepare a “bibliography” of my academic textbooks so I could cut & paste the information into essay footnotes, but that was mainly to save time & energy (and present the details in an accepted format). After all, I know where all my books are and what is in them (I think!). The E-books are harder to keep in order, does anyone know a good program to catalogue the files on a CD or DVD?

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 19:12:58 +0000

I love Library Thing, although you’re right, it doesn’t necessarily help inventory management for ebooks.

Interestingly, there’s a way to import your amazon purchases en masse into the system. (check the FAQ).

The lesson we learn from this is that an ebook website should have the ability to display bookmarks/favorites to share with other people.