Cheesy title, I know, but it really is. I found LibraryThing by way of the City Record and Boston News-letter, a great blog maintained by a local historian.
It’s got the usual web 2.0 basics…you tag your books, and get ye olde tag cloud when you’re done. You can see who else has that book, and browse through their collection to see if there’s anything you’d find interesting. Oh, and it will display your collection as a virtual bookshelf, ala delicious monster (only, you know, for us unwashed non-mac-owning heathens). Plus, there’s the usual assortment of widgets and toys for showing off your collection on your blog, etc.
The real key, of course, is how much of a pain will it be entering my books? And they’ve got a really good fuzzy book search. I mean really good. Defaults to searching Amazon, but you can point it at the Library of Congress, as well as a number of different college libraries. Choices for a number of other countries as well. If that’s too much of a pain, they’ve got an import tool that can read from pretty much any source you can come up with, including the aforementioned delicious monster as well as Amazon wishlists.
Most importantly, it just works.
…and I’m a life-long Bostonian, recently and temporarily residing in Portland, ME. If any programmers in Boston read this, shoot me a line!
Wow, this is fantastic and well implemented. I have to say, I have been toying with something like this for a little while, but more as a niche tool (not for the general public). Hopefully it will see the light of day (someday).
Heh, I’d been “toying” with a video/dvd version for a while, too. Which reminds me, I need to test if I can add dvds to my catalogue.
So…good…J’s so busy adding books he can’t take the time to comment.
Nope, no movies. Ah, well.
Thanks for reading the City Record and Boston News-Letter. What I find most useful about LibraryThing is its ability to find 18th and 19th century books. As to speed, I can do 70-90 books an hour, which seems pretty darn fast to me. Now if the Boston Atheaneum can be added as a library I will be set…
ooh…yeah, that would be nice.
Someday, I will actually go on a tour of the Atheaneum. It wasn’t until recently that I actually walked by the building, as previously I wasn’t exactly sure of its location.
If you want a tour of the Athenaeum some time, shoot me an email. I’m a member. I’d like access to their catalog because I have a bunch of obscure pamphlets and things like that which I know they also have in their catalog.
“Now if the Boston Atheaneum can be added as a library I will be set…”
Done! See the blog, http://www.librarything.com/blog/2006/03/ten-more-libraries.php .
And, btw, I’m a member too. (Or was—I think it just lapsed, but I’ll have LibraryThing pick up the tab now.)
What would you say to a LibraryThing meetup at the Athenaeum’s tea? Wouldn’t that be fun?
Talk about “Ask an ye shall receive!”