Today, I'm finally getting around to doing something I've meant to accomplish ever since the close of this year's SLIG: set up my own account at LibraryThing. (Don't go looking for my user name yet on the app; after all, this project is on my to-do list for today.)
I first heard of LibraryThing thanks to comments erupting on the private Facebook group for SLIG attendees at the end of the second January session. Just reading through all the comments was enough to give me a brief overview of what the app could do for a book lover like me. I was instantaneously sold on the idea. I have, after all, far more books in my house than I'd care to inventory by hand.
LibraryThing is "a community brought together by the love of books." Is it any surprise, then, that genealogists—who, at their roots, must also be lovers of history—would be lovers of books?
Apparently, ever since LibraryThing's launch by web developer Tim Spalding in August of 2005, it has grown to well over two million users who use the online service to catalog and track their books, music, and movies—even scan those titles into your own personal catalog by using your phone and the LibraryThing app.
Some SLIG attendees mentioned using the service to help keep track of the books they lend out to friends—a perennial problem for those of us who love books and have friends who love them, too. I am perhaps not as generous, having long since failed the necessary retrieval tasks at the other end of that exchange. But I do have two storage bins filled with books needing to be rehoused on a bookshelf in my living room, the perfect opportunity to put the newly-downloaded LibraryThing app through its paces.
Only nine hundred ninety nine more books to go...and counting (digitally).
Library Thing is great. Tip - When you enter books, just put in the ISBN number if there is one. Entries go much faster that way.
ReplyDeleteCan you believe I actually have some books which pre-date the ISBN system? But yes, the entry went quickly, even more so for the books which I could scan using my phone. Lightning fast, that way.
DeleteOoooh. Thank you Jacqi and Linda. I embrace tools that help me with my (dis)organization.
ReplyDeleteLisa, I am with you on that one. I'm hoping this will be a way for me to keep track of the many books we have stuffed in spare nooks in all rooms of the house.
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