I am a librarian. I should understand this... but I don't. Why do you want to do this? Why would you want to catalog all your books? Why would you want to go to all that trouble?
FWIW, I am on Goodreads. I use it primarily as a place to keep track of books I come across and WANT to read, so I don't forget them. I also picked Goodreads because it had a better widget, so I could plug it into my blog, so people could see what I was currently reading... Of course, most of the books on the list I do not own. I just check them out of the library.
Carto, you bring up an excellent point. Here are the reasons why I catalog my books:
1) So people can borrow them. (see
previous post)
2) If my apartment ever gets robbed or burned up, I have a record of my books for insurance reasons.
3) For my own curiousity. It's fun to see different stats on my books. Like, how many books i acquire each year. What year is the most popular. Which author do I have the most of.
4) Social networking. It's fun to look through other people's books and make friends with peeps who have common interests. Granted, I haven't really done this on librarything.com. The only non-dating sites that I've actually met people from are 43things.com, meetup.com, flickr.com. But I just discovered the groups feature on librarything, and it has some very good potential.
For books that I want to read, I add those to my
Amazon wish list.
Posted by:
spudart on Dec 08, 08 | 11:55 am
Amazon Wish List... yes, I tried that, but then people bought them for me! I don't buy books, I borrow them.
whoa, thanks for the detailed breakdown.
Posted by: Sarah on Dec 09, 08 | 6:02 pm
Thank you for this VERY informative and helpful analysis! This is exactly what I needed to make my final decision.
Posted by: on Dec 09, 08 | 10:48 pm
Excellent analysis. I recently switched to librarything from goodreads for some of the reasons you mentioned above (and the early reviewer program!). Slight correction, goodreads does allow export. Oddly enough it is buried on the import page so it is no surprise that many people miss it.
Posted by: Emme on Dec 17, 08 | 8:49 am
thanks for the analysis...I've decided to use librarythings not only for the books I own but for noting all that I've read (I'm a big library user). I may use the private comment section for notes on who I might want to recommend books to, esp christian books. Would love to hear all the different ways people are using these and other sites as I'm a newbie to the computer world...still concerned about privacy issues & would appreciate feedback on that. Thanks!
Posted by: susie on Dec 21, 08 | 1:40 pm
good comparison ..LT is the far superior site
@Cartophiliac the clueless Librarian
RE: "Why would you want to catalog all your books?" and "I don't buy books...."
wow...just wow
Posted by: AKA on Aug 17, 09 | 11:18 pm