LibraryThing was recommended to me about a month ago by a certain hep cat who's always down with the most doos new CPL resources. I briefly wondered why I would need or use it. I’ve had the Novelist option for years and hardly use it beyond readers’ advisory. I don't find it particularly user-friendly, and the books it catalogues seem quite limited.
But LibraryThing is so much more. Many users means many, many books to browse and review. And yes, it can be my own little catalogue of experience and ownership! It's not infrequently that I forget the title of a book I've read, or remember the title but not the author. Usually find-out-able. Worse are those times I lose both title and author. At the moment I am trying to remember the name of a YA novel I read a few years ago. A very decent dystopia, and though I can picture the cover, the word-parts of the cover just won’t come in to focus. Familiarity breeds many things, knowledge among them. If I tracked my reads, this would probably be easier to recollect, and indeed very easy to search out.
Besides easily cataloguing your reads, you can connect with other readers, browse blogs, play wordy-people games, that type of thing. Ahh, community in its many forms. Public libraries and local booksellers could benefit from advertising upcoming programs, author readings, sales in the 'Local Events' area.
LibraryThing makes a great suggestion for the readers we advise. They can easily join the 850,000-strong community of booklovers to exchange reviews, ideas about books, and the next great read. My husband belongs to a similar online world called Discogs, which is directed towards music lovers and cataloguers. Discogs allows C. to catalogue his vast music collection, 'meet' other fans of small labels that few have ever heard of, track a want list, buy music from fellow users who are selling hard-to-find vinyl or CDs and generally geek out, music-style. Yes, there is one person left in North America who still buys music, and it is my sweet baboo.
LibraryThing could be my equivalent. It's very user-friendly, and I enjoy connecting with other readers and word-loving people. The tour uses plain language and is easy to navigate. Signing up was a challenge only in that my first- and second-choice user names were already in use, but I had to go all the way through the registration process to find that out. No offer of similar suggestions either. We 21st-century consumers are just so demanding.
I look forward to using LibraryThing more often, definitely doing some cataloguing as I read, possibly throwing down a few reviews in exchange for free pre-publication tomes, and recommending it to many real live library users.
Post script
I did a quick search in LibraryThing to see if I could identify that YA dystopian novel, by some off-chance. I entered the search terms "YA, dystopia". A lengthy list was returned through the Tagmash, which searched books with all manner of variation on my tags, including "teen, dystopian, science fiction, fantasy". Wonderful! The title I was looking for wasn't there, but as I browsed I passed The Unnameables by Ellen Booraem. Haven't read it but something struck a chord ...
I then searched the CPL catalogue for YA books, author keyword "Ellen", and lo and behold, I found it! The book was Stolen Voices by Ellen Dee Davidson. Forgettable title; forgettable author's name; pretty decent read. Yay LibraryThing! I like the way you prompt my memory.
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