Week 8, Thing #19

I've been eagerly awaiting this lesson since I first heard about LibraryThing at NECC. I knew this was something that I was going to love. I created my account when I looked at LibraryThing during Week 6. I took the tour again and the tour is excellent. I am seriously considering a lifetime membership to LibraryThing.

I catalogued a dozen of my autographed Christmas books. It was easy and I did it by title until I realized that ISBN was quicker for me. I liked that I could use the same tags for all books and didn't have to type them each time. When I look at my library, not all of my books display with a cover. One is not available, but the other two have covers that are not displaying. I am one of 1,019 people who own The Night Before Christmas, illustrated by Tomie de Paola, but the only person who has catalogued Christmas Always... by Peter Catalanotto.

I added a widget to my library and a random display of some of the books in my library. I also added a LibraryThing search box, but decided to remove it when it didn't do what I expected it to do.

Thingology blog has several things that I want to explore later. I may decide to add it to my Google Reader.

I looked at the libraries that are using LibraryThing. What a wonderful way for my librarians to highlight new books. I think that LibraryThing for Libraries is something that we need to seriously consider.

There was one other feature of LibrayThing that I thought was interesting. I liked the idea of being able to get a list of suggested and "unsuggested" reading. I think BookSuggester would be a wonderful tool, especially for reluctant readers who have found a book they like and want something just like it.