LibraryThing . . . not Library Thing
It must be the time of year -- doing taxes, cleaning my office, Theo (aka The Santorini Bride) being back again for deflagging (about which more later), sorting through piles -- but the need to be organized is overtaking me. I'm cataloguing my library.
No! you say.
Yes! Honest. Because it isn't difficult. If it were, I'd be cleaning the oven. But last night I got the weekly email from the ancestry.com website, which is where I spend my time trawling for dead relatives when I'm not writing about fictional heroes (yes, I know, I really need to get a life). And in the email a very kind soul recommended a site called LibraryThing which you can use to catalogue your books.
You can catalogue 200 books for free. Or you can sign up for a yearly fee or a lifetime fee. My notion is, if you only have 200 books, you can remember what they are. Good grief, I've got more than 200 books about to fall on me if I so much as look wrong at the shelves behind my computer monitor! So, I don't know that anyone with a true love of books is going to have a collection of less than 200. I certainly don't. I got 200 catalogued in less than an hour and a half. Then I got a lifetime membership.
It's so cool. I can go to 'add books' and type in a rough estimation of the name and/or author -- and it, quick as a wink, searches Amazon, the Library of Congress, OCLC and lots of other places and comes back with suggestions, complete with publishing detail (as written on those sites) and in many cases a cover of the actual book (or some edition of the book).
Now, if you're picky you will want to add in all the info yourself right down to the edition that you have. But I'm trying to get a ballpark idea of what I have in certain fields. I don't care if I have the most recent edition of Colloquial Navajo or not. I just care that I don't accidentally buy two of them!
It's been done. You are reading a blog by someone who has two copies of The Making of the Cornish Landscape because she didn't have LibraryThing around two weeks ago to tell her she already had one on the top shelf of the bookcase in the corner of the living room, where her Cornish books are not supposed to be!
If anyone wants to buy a copy of The Making of the Cornish Landscape, I'll sell one cheap. Just send me a note or make a comment here.
Anyway, LibraryThing has all sorts of potential for keeping me sane and my library manageable and it even allows me to find other people who have the same book interests that I have. It's interesting that a few discerning souls have actually catalogued copies of Anne McAllister books. I'm impressed!
So, if you, too, are about to be buried by books -- or you have copies lurking in corners that you've forgotten -- you might give LibraryThing a look. It makes the cataloguing easy -- and actually fun. The only downside I can see is that I have found, while looking for books I already have, books that I would love to add to the growing collection! Yikes.
I'm resisting so far. But I have created a category called "wanted."
No! you say.
Yes! Honest. Because it isn't difficult. If it were, I'd be cleaning the oven. But last night I got the weekly email from the ancestry.com website, which is where I spend my time trawling for dead relatives when I'm not writing about fictional heroes (yes, I know, I really need to get a life). And in the email a very kind soul recommended a site called LibraryThing which you can use to catalogue your books.
You can catalogue 200 books for free. Or you can sign up for a yearly fee or a lifetime fee. My notion is, if you only have 200 books, you can remember what they are. Good grief, I've got more than 200 books about to fall on me if I so much as look wrong at the shelves behind my computer monitor! So, I don't know that anyone with a true love of books is going to have a collection of less than 200. I certainly don't. I got 200 catalogued in less than an hour and a half. Then I got a lifetime membership.
It's so cool. I can go to 'add books' and type in a rough estimation of the name and/or author -- and it, quick as a wink, searches Amazon, the Library of Congress, OCLC and lots of other places and comes back with suggestions, complete with publishing detail (as written on those sites) and in many cases a cover of the actual book (or some edition of the book).
Now, if you're picky you will want to add in all the info yourself right down to the edition that you have. But I'm trying to get a ballpark idea of what I have in certain fields. I don't care if I have the most recent edition of Colloquial Navajo or not. I just care that I don't accidentally buy two of them!
It's been done. You are reading a blog by someone who has two copies of The Making of the Cornish Landscape because she didn't have LibraryThing around two weeks ago to tell her she already had one on the top shelf of the bookcase in the corner of the living room, where her Cornish books are not supposed to be!
If anyone wants to buy a copy of The Making of the Cornish Landscape, I'll sell one cheap. Just send me a note or make a comment here.
Anyway, LibraryThing has all sorts of potential for keeping me sane and my library manageable and it even allows me to find other people who have the same book interests that I have. It's interesting that a few discerning souls have actually catalogued copies of Anne McAllister books. I'm impressed!
So, if you, too, are about to be buried by books -- or you have copies lurking in corners that you've forgotten -- you might give LibraryThing a look. It makes the cataloguing easy -- and actually fun. The only downside I can see is that I have found, while looking for books I already have, books that I would love to add to the growing collection! Yikes.
I'm resisting so far. But I have created a category called "wanted."
posted by Anne McAllister at 10:39 AM
4 Comments:
I'm the person who sent Ancestry the information about LibraryThing. So glad you like it.
Marnie
Marnie,
Thank you so much for having posted the info about LibraryThing on Ancestry. I love it. I've got almost 500 books catalogued already, and have found only a handful that weren't in some form already there for the plucking -- right down to an old filmsy paperbound piece about the reminiscences of early Monona County, Iowa pioneers!
I passed the word on Ken Aitken's GenealogyEducation blog, too. Word of mouth . . . it helps so much!
Thanks again,
Anne
I read this blog last year and looked for LibraryThing. Because of space limitations my library is only going to be between 500 and 600, but how wonderful to get it all listed. I have recommended it to lots of people. Your books have meant a lot to me, and this recommendation was the icing on the cake! Martha
Hi Martha, Thanks for stopping back by to let me know you've liked using Library Thing. I have, too. Just last week I was looking for a book I hadn't used in more than a year. I went to Library Thing and found it -- and I'd tagged which shelves I'd put it on! I wouldn't necessarily have remembered otherwise. So I was very glad to have it.
I've still got more books to catalogue! Never enough time.
Glad you have enjoyed my books, too. Thanks for the kind words.
Anne
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