Library Thing

As a few of you regular readers might figured out already by the number of books I’ve reviewed since I started writing for this site, I’m a bit of a book addict.

I’ve been collecting books ever since my college days. Many of them not read, though I do read a lot. I used to be embarrassed about how man books I own until I discovered at different stops in cyberspace other people like myself who visit the book store a couple of times of week, or who relish buying books in a series, not only for the reading but for how they look on your book shelf. The twelve volume paperback edition Anton Checkov stories is one of the first series I bought during college. I nearly finished each volume before moving on to other reading interests.

Anyway, I’m elated that I recently stumbled upon a relatively new site called LibraryThing. I forget how I discovered it, but it seems that well over 17,000 other book lovers have found the site since August of 2005 when it was established.

This site is principally about cataloguing the books you own or want to own and read. It’s about coming out as a book addict and letting the world know your love of literature.

I’ve slowly started cataloguing my books last week, but there are others who put my library to shame. There’s a book owner called theraven who has so far catalogued 8,110 of his 10,000 books. The Zeitgeist list of LibraryThing (LT) also reveals some quite obvious literary facts.  The Harry Potter series tops the list of the 25 most owned books by site members. I must admit I’m not a Harry Potter fan. Tried it, wasn’t interested. The Da Vinci Code is also in the top 25 most owned and reviewed books, and I have read it, though it’s one of the few fictional books I’ve read in a while.

I exchanged a few emails with the developer of LibraryThing, Tim Spalding, this past weekend and he’s very excited about making this site as popular for book readers and Flickr is for picture takers. 

Like Flickr, LT is becoming an aggregate of information gathering. You can input your books by typing in the title of the book or its ISBN number and, even better, you can add books to your catalog by viewing the catalogs of those who share similar reading interests as you. This is possible because like Flickr, LT uses tagging as way to categorize and identify books input into the system. It’s simply a more hip, democratic way of classifying information. Even Amazon.com understands the power of tagging.

Spalding plans to add groups and other social networking features to the site, which should help it expand.Membership to the site is cheaper than Flickr: $10 per month or $25 for a lifetime membership—which would get!

All and all, Library Thing is Flickr with books. Amazon.com without the price tags. And Del.icio.us and All Consuming for all us literary junkies.