Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Library Thing…Finally

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Not sure why it took me so long to finally dive into Library Thing but, despite the imminent demise of books as we know them (smile) I got hooked in maybe 27 seconds. In fact, I might say that I found LT to be among (if not the) most intuitive, easy to use, fantastically fast interface of any social site I’ve seen yet.

Basically, Library Thing allows you to easily catalog all of the books in your personal library which, in turn, leads to all sorts of social goodness. I can easily find out who else is reading the books I have, see what’s in their libraries, and start conversations with them about what they are reading and recommending. Of course, I can tag the books in my collection, rate them, write a review, add comments to the listing, and access all of the Library of Congress information about the book in an instant. (They just added their 9 millionth book to their database.) There are widgets to add (scroll down and see mine in the right hand column) and it has a great zeitgeist page that gives an overview of all things…um…Library Things. (For instance, the largest collection is 14, 954 books…whoa!)

Obviously, this is a great way to not only track what you’re reading but find other stuff to read (although one look at the stack of books next to my bed and I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.) But I also thing it’s a wonderful example of the social potential of Web 2.0 in a very concrete way. I mean del.icio.us is a powerful tool, but I’m not sure how many people really “get it” without some bit of brainwork. This is easy and obvious, and let’s face it, everyone has a library…right?

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Comments

  2. Carolyn Foote says

    Will,

    Ok, 😉 I couldn’t resist the comment about the demise of books 😉 I always tell people that the internet is basically making everyone their own librarian and now they can see how much fun we’ve been having all this time 😉

    This site is a very cool idea, and I wonder why I didn’t know about it already!

    It’s like Amazon for your own catalog. And by the way, as I’m writing that, I’m thinking that of course Amazon.com beat libraries to the punch, because library catalog software is just barely catching up to the ideas in Amazon’s database, and now, Library thing has beat them to the punch on the rest of it!

    (an aside–but it’s also interesting that libraries are modeling themselves now after Barnes/Noble, etc., once again, being beaten to the punch by a commercial entity. The pace of change is driving change within the library world, which I have to add is adapting somewhat quickly in a lot of ways.)

    It strikes me how well this ties into the ideas in your previous post too, of connectivity and sharing ideas. Books won’t sit “alone” on your shelves any more.

    Love this and hope you’ll share it at my campus!

  5. Alan says

    I too got rather bitten dep from the first click. LibraryThing does so many things right:
    http://cogdogblog.com/2007/01/03/librarything/

    It has that flickr-ish magical balance of gain to the individual (a way to organize info w/o too much labor) and at no extra cost, a multiplied effect when you aggregate with other people’s “things”. And there are so many layers, and seemngly infinite ways to joyfully discover.

    Yet, it seems like it ought to be one of those Teacher 2.0 regular tools, but am not sure if I’ve seen much uptake.

    FWIW, I started this when trying to suggest it might be a better way than email for a group to build a reading list… There is good reason perhaps to separate professional and personal readings, so I have 2 accounts:
    http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cogdogblog
    http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cogdog

    And even cooler, just discovered! When I am logged into one of my accounts, and view your catalong, it shows me which books we have in common.

    Love this stuff.

  7. Craig Duplessie says

    I just started playing with Shelfari today. I opened up the LibraryThing website before I signed up for an account, but the Shelfari site was asthetically more pleasing to me, so I went with it. Very Cool!

    I’m going to create a second account this weekend to track my 4 year old daughter’s quickly expanding library.

    Will, your comment about del.icio.us is so true… I showed del.icio.us to a group a teachers during a pd session on Tuesday and thier eyes glazed over. I know the reaction will be different when I show teachers LibraryThing or Shelfari.

  12. Alice Mercer says

    The social networking/sharing of book lists is nice. It reminds me of http://bookcrossing.com/,
    but I liked that even better because of the whole thing of not just sharing the idea of the book, but actually sharing the book, and seeing it move around. I keep hearing about the death of the book as a paper and print product, but I still find the paradigm of a physical book compelling, and the idea of one moving around the world from stranger to stranger is pretty impressive.

  13. Rachel says

    This site is great for kids too! My 10 year old daughter started using it when i did & never has a problem now wondering what to read. She will put in her favourite books & authors & then find out what other books they have written, who else is reading the same books she is and check out what they are reading. A really great way to get kids to extend their range of literary choices & maybe (though i haven’t suggested it to my daughter) to write about the books they have read to help inform other kids choices…