I’ve recently rekindled my relationship with LibraryThing. Enough to pay the $25 suggested fee for lifetime membership.
I’ve commented in the past that I don’t understand why more library people—even those who don’t ‘get’ general social networking—aren’t into LibraryThing in a big way.
“From a personal profile displaying your own book collections (complete with cover images, tagging, and full bibliographic detail), via recommendations based on the similarity of your collections with others’, to a range of APIs (including free book cover images) by way of group forums and a worldwide library directory… there’s a lot here that libraries can use to enhance their services.”
So, I’ve populated my profile; a bit po-faced it is:
“I’m the electronic resources librarian at the University of Lincoln, UK. I like to read books on popular science / history of science, technology & engineering, biology/ecology (especially aquatic biology and entomology), languages, local history, railways, and some science fiction. I live in Lincolnshire.”
…and I’ve started adding, tagging and rating my books. (I haven’t got into writing reviews yet, and I don’t expect I ever will: I haven’t got the patience or the attention span.) I’ve used it as an opportunity to weed my bookshelf quite severely, too; I don’t really fetishize books-as-objects and—with a few exceptions—I don’t really care about keeping books once I’ve read them, so a lot of stuff is now boxed up to go [back] to the charity shops.
I’ve organised my books into collections (a great improvement to LibraryThing it was when they came along):
- My library: books I’m keeping hold of for the time being;
- Reference [shared]: mainly wildlife and natural history books that belong to the whole family;
- Read but unowned: ultimately this will form the bulk of stuff, including what I’ve bought and disposed of, borrowed, or downloaded;
- My wishlist of books I’d like to read;
- Lastly, what I’m currently reading.
If you want to browse my books or connect with me, I’m “pstainthorp” on LibraryThing (as I am in most places).
