Thing #12: LibraryThing

I'd set up my LibraryThing account several months ago, and thought it looked like it could be useful, but I never got around to adding any books (until now). Adding the books is easy enough, but nonetheless I doubt that this is something I'll be able to keep up with.

The social aspect of this doesn't particularly appeal to me. I'm not that interested in finding out who else owns the same books that I do: I don't see from looking at this that common ownership of a particular book is a good predictor of common interests in other areas. (Or perhaps this just comes with being a troglodyte.)

I could see that having a remotely accessible catalog of one's own books could be useful when going to used book sales: you could check to make sure you didn't already have a particular book before buying it. There are a couple of problems with this, though. If you have a book collection large enough to make this necessary, you'd need a paid account (whether it would be worth the cost is debatable). More significantly, a large collection (especially of older books without ISBN's) would take considerable time to enter and keep up.

On the other hand, the Readers Advisory staff at our library has made good use of their LibraryThing account.