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For those of you who have never run across the site, check out LibraryThing ( http://www.librarything.com ).
It's an absolutely amazing startup project that allows you to catalogue your own book collection, tag it with any keywords you want, search other people's libraries, compare books, get book recommendations based on your own selections... the list goes on and on, and the developer is always adding new features. It's still in beta and there are already over a million titles in the database!
Yes, I know I sound like an advertisement. I'm not advertising, I'm evangelising I'm sure most of you have extensive libraries, much like myself. It took me about 30 mins of use (I hit the 200 book free library limit) before I bought a lifetime membership.
P.S. This is EVERY book I've bought (or nearly) since I was 10 years old or so, so don't tease me too much about the 2 pages or so of Piers Anthony that pop up when you first get there
[This message has been edited by TheBishop (edited January 08, 2006).]
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I gave up trying to catalog my SF books when I was approaching Book #2000...now I just pile them in somewhat general categories in different parts of the house. And sometimes it's difficult to find a biography of, say, Tolkien when it's in the biography pile while I'm thinking it's in th SF / fantasy pile. (I never did find the book I wanted to quote in the (now-locked) quotes thread.)
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quote:now I just pile them in somewhat general categories in different parts of the house
This site is for you! Assuming you don't mind the actual cataloguing process, just pick 'em up, enter 'em, put 'em back, and add a tag for whatever room/location you have them in
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What *I* want to know is where the HECK are the hundreds of books I've loaned out over the years that seem to have simply vanished. I used to mentally berate those evil people who would swipe my books, until I realized I only loan to good friends. Then I started cruising their bookshelves. My best friend found a ton of my favorite books on local history packed in a box and stored in the rafters in her garage... about 10 years later. Another friend was giving away books when she moved... I started digging through the box and realized a bunch of them were mine. I recently bought some old-fashioned, stick-it-in-the-back-inside-cover book check-out pockets and cards like libraries USED to use. I fill out a card now when I loan the book so at least I know who to harass when I want it back. *sigh* Friends.
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So far, I like it. I've tried to catalogue my library in the past, using a spreadsheet, but I never liked the results. It was nice to be able to just type in the ISBN and click the link. I only had to add a few books manually, because they were obscure editions that Amazon didn't know about.
One strange thing did happen. Our copy of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine is a cheap Walmart edition. When I searched for its ISBN, the result that came up was for The Call of the Wild! Just the sort of quality I've come to expect from Walmart...
I really liked the site-wide author cloud display. Based on that, there seems to be mostly spec-fic readers using this system right now.
Oh, and as of last night, I had the third largest Orson Scott Card collection. *preens*
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Okay Mel now you've got me really interested. I think the only OSC book I have yet to buy is his Lovelock one, and several of the others I own in multiple editions, so now I'm curious as to what it will say when I catalogue my own books. A little friendly competition never hurt, right?
Actually this year my husband and I pared down from 157 square feet of books to only 122, because we started to feel like the living room walls were closing in .
So now we have a couple bookcases in each room of the house, instead of all 9 in the living room, and we sold two.
At least the books we have left are all very important to us, and not just random novels one of us read one time or was given for free.
And I still don't own copies of quite a few that I want to, for various reasons, most of which involve lack of money, or loaning to friends and never seeing again. I admit that on occasion when I have been invited to a last minute birthday party I've wrapped a book in new condition from my shelf instead of buying them a copy, always vowing to replace it later of course, but often not getting around to it as soon as I'd like.
I do wonder how the system handles foreign books, though. I guess I'll find out. My husband brought his collection over from Scotland when we got married, and I also like to buy British editions of books online, if I like the cover art better than the US edition. The Lemony Snicket books are particularly nice in the UK, in case anyone would like to take a look on amazon.co.uk
[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited January 11, 2006).]
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You're on, Rachel! My username there is jaegerthewolf. Although, I don't have multiple editions of the same book, so you'll probably have me beat. Well, the only exception is that I have the Maps In a Mirror omnibus as well as one of the individual paperbacks.
So far I've only had to enter one British edition of a book, but it was easy. In the Add Book section, choose to search Amazon.co.uk instead of Amazon.com, and it will probably find it.
At the moment, we have three 6-ft bookcases, two 4-ft, a 3-ft tall on that wraps around the dining room, and a little one-shelf bookcase that I made. All are full of books, and there are more books still in boxes. I have been doing some purging lately, but convincing my husband to give up a book, even one he doesn't like, is nearly impossible. A few months ago I sold/gave away all of my Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind books (because both series[es?] were becoming frustrating), and I felt so free afterwards.
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Yeah, I thought I would be very upset to part with any of my books (I have some that I got as a baby), but it was actually liberating. And it made me care more about what was left.
Though I actually don't think I parted with any of my childhood books. Those are just too close to my heart.
Last night I just catalogued those books that I have laying around and haven't put back on the shelf in a while, plus one little bookcase in the living room that is just board books. I'm already at 157 and haven't really started on the sci-fi/fantasy stuff. I think I'm gonna have to pay for a membership. I don't know how many books I have, but it's probably approaching a thousand. That's not as many as a lot of people, but when you consider they are all books I've read and loved, it's a fair amount.
[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited January 12, 2006).]
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Anyone who hasn't checked this out probably should--but NOT RIGHT NOW. They've been having some database troubles (probably at least in part because it's so unexpectedly popular that it's growing faster than planned for). Tim Spalding says:
quote:If there is anyone out there who is confident they could help—it's a PHP, MySQL site—give me a ring. I'm quite willing to pay $65/hour for competent help.
Right now you can go to the site, click on blog (that still works) and get Tim's email from there.
By the way, Mel and autumn, you guys got me curious, so (this is a couple of days ago, before it fell apart) I got on as "unclebaldrick" and entered all my OSC books. To my surprise--I was number 1 (though by only one book). That's also with no duplicates, I think--but I know I got the wrong version in sometimes. I was going through and fixing that when it crashed. If I accidentally had a duplicate, that could knock me down.
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Well I don't know what it says about me. The site went down approximately 30 seconds after I payed the $25 for a lifetime membership, and hasn't been back since.
I put 200 books in first, but they were in no particular order and only included a couple OSC books.
I have several crates of books I've taken off the shelf that are sitting next to the computer waiting for the site to go back up, so I can put them in.
I'm RachelAnnDryden on the site, if anyone cares what I read . Though admittedly the books I have on there right now are not very representational. Lots of my daughters' board books and a bunch of my hubbie's pulp novels that I haven't read yet. Oh well. Once the site comes back I'll show my true colors.
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I'm sure most of you have extensive libraries, much like myself. It took me about 30 mins of use (I hit the 200 book free library limit) before I bought a lifetime membership.
