I've been thinking about libarary catalog software ever since last year's hurricanes reminded us of the ephemerality of material things — especially when they're soggy. Amy Welborn's got a nifty mosaic of book covers on the left side of her blog, which turn out to be a link to her catalog on LibraryThing. LibraryThing is a shared online cataloging system -- like a wishlist, but for books you already own.
I'm not entirely comfortable sharing the contents of my library with the entire world, but there's a really compelling upside to LibraryThing. The sofware will provide the same kind of recommendations that sites like Amazon do. You can browse the catalogs for everyone else who owns Kaspar Riemschneider's Akkadian Grammar and see what else they have on the subject. There are comment boxes on user entries, so you can ask Languagehat about his collection.
I'm not sure that that's a good thing, though. I don't have time to commiserate about Riemschneider's choice of Old Babylonian augury texts for all his exercises with someone just working through the book. It seems like the social networking aspect I don't want — or at least assume I wouldn't gain much from — is the cost of using group recommendation algorithms nowadays. Are there other downsides to sharing your book holdings with the world?
Posted by Ben Brumfield at July 14, 2006 02:56 PMWell, for one thing, I'd have to finally throw away all those old fantasy novels that have been sitting around since my teens.
I dunno, I like the idea and think I'll give it a spin. Ever hear of that software you can buy that comes with a scanner so you can build a catalogue by scanning the UPS codes on your books? My gadgetlust almost got the better of me when I heard about that one.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at July 14, 2006 03:11 PMI believe that Alexandria does that, and you can use the CueCat reader with it -- originally distributed free in a serious marketing failure, and now sold for cheap on eBay.
I don't see that at LibraryThing, but presumably you could use some client-side software like Alexandria for entry and then use the LibraryThing acquisition/import stuff.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at July 14, 2006 03:20 PMHey, this is the LibraryThing guy. You can get the recommendations--book by book and the all-library ones--without participating in the social system. Just make your library "private." If you want to fend off unwnted comments, but keep your library public, you can turn off profile comments.
Posted by: Tim at July 16, 2006 07:10 AMCool. Tell me, is there a way of commenting on the intersection of users and books? In other words, to attach a user comment to a book?
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at July 17, 2006 08:23 AMAlthough I've entered most of my libary, including the surviving SF and Fantasy items from my youth, I've barely scratched the surface of the system. From what I can tell, you can add tags to books, post reviews, and leave comments for other users. I think the only method for commenting on a book itself, is to use the review system.
I may be wrong about that, though.
Posted by: Chris at July 18, 2006 10:05 AM