Do You LibraryThing?

Web 2.0 applications have been all the rage for some time. One of the most successful applications is LibraryThing. At free for up to 200 books, $10/year, or $25 for a lifetime of cataloging, it is a great bargain. There are a lot of ways genealogists are using this tool.

The most obvious use is to catalog the books in one's personal library. With the ability to import records from hundreds of worldwide bibliographic tools, it takes only your imagination to find a library catalog that might have that resource in your hand so that you don't have to catalog it manually. For example, I had a publication that I had picked up at a genealogical conference that was published in Ireland. I found a library in Ireland that had that title in their collection and used their record. I will admit that there are titles that I have that are pretty unique. I have had to enter these manually. Since I'm a cataloger by profession, that doesn't bother me. However, I know that I tend to be pickier about my cataloging than others are. Instead of subject headings, one can use tags to identify the books. Many people also tag locations of their books such as "shelf 16" or "box 22".

LibraryThing also gives one the ability to add reviews of items. If we genealogists used these reviews to their full potential, we could really keep up with strengths and weaknesses of various titles. In my experience, reviews are more honest on LibraryThing than at Amazon.com.

One of my favorite features of LibraryThing is the ability to find similar libraries. I have found many fellow genealogists using these. I add them to my friends, to my "interesting libraries," or to my "private watch list." That way I receive notifications of additions they make to their libraries. I'm able to find some titles of interest this way and often order them or add them to my wish list.

I don't know of many genealogists who use LibraryThing for their wish list, but I do know there are a lot of users who do and use the tag "wish list" for the items that aren't in their library. LibraryThing really would prefer that folks only use LibraryThing for things they own or have read.

Many of us use it for things we have read but do not own. I typically use the "NIL" (not in library) tag that many other LibraryThing users for these items and then add a location code for them. I have tags for books borrowed from friends and for books borrowed from libraries. They probably mean nothing to most people, but they mean something to me.

Then we have the "thinking outside the box" type of LibraryThing user. One of my genealogist friends has taken the various journals in his library and entered each article as a title. He uses the tags he has devised to easily locate articles in his personal collection. It's kind of like a PERSI index that is limited in scope to the journals in his own possession. The more and more I see his entries, the more and more I'm tempted to do the same thing for some of mine. I tend to forget about those lists of insolvents and transcribed censuses of schoolchildren that appeared in various issues of journals, but they are tools in my library that I could be using more often if I included them in my LibraryThing catalog and tagged them.

LibraryThing also has groups, but most of the genealogy groups are not very active.

Do you use LibraryThing? Do you have any special way of using it?

Tuesday Thingers - September 2, 2008

For those who wonder, Tuesday Thingers is a weekly meme for users of LibraryThing who blog. Question from Boston Bibliophile:

Members who have your books. Do you ever look at this feature? Do you use it to make LT friends, or compare notes? There are three tabs- weighted, raw, and recent. “Weighted,” which means “weighted by book obscurity and library size” is probably the least self-explanatory of the three, whereas “raw” and “recent” are more so. Do you get any kind of use out of this feature?

I do look at the future. I have actually found some fellow genealogists that I know through the said feature. I will almost always browse the libraries of my fellow genealogists to see if they have some book of which I'd been previously unaware. I then might try to order that book if it is something that I really really need for my personal research or I might add it to a wish list to order. My Amazon.com wish list is getting really really long thanks to LibraryThing.

I do pay attention to all three tabs, but I probably pay the most attention to weighted simply because it is the default. When I get bored with seeing the same folks in the list, I check the others. I really do like the "recent" feature because it shows new LibraryThing folks with similar interests or people who've recently been adding a lot of books with similar libraries.

My largest categories are history and genealogy, cookery, and mystery. The people who tend to show up at the top of my list are fellow mystery lovers. I get a lot of genealogists in the top 50, but it is understandable that they are not at the very top of my list because of the size of my collection and because genealogists tend to collect heavily in places that are important to their own personal research. I'm really glad to have the matches I do have with genealogists.

Do I add them to my friends? No. Most of the time I just add them to my interesting libraries or to my private watch list if I really want to keep track of their new additions. I have added very few recently because we now get automatic recommendations based on the top 50 libraries in our weighted score. I have corresponded with a few people, but it's pretty rare.

Tuesday Thingers - August 12, 2008

Today's question: Favorite bookstores. What's your favorite bookstore? Is it an online store or a bricks-and-mortar store? How often do you go book shopping? Is your favorite bookstore (or bookstores) listed as a favorite in LT? Do you attend events at local bookstores? Do you use LT to find events?

I really wish that we had a great bookstore in this area. Since we don't, I tend to purchase most of my books from Amazon.com. When I'm in Knoxville, I enjoy going to McKay Used Books and CDs. I also visit Borders and Barnes & Noble there. Those are big chains, but they have great selections. I sometimes go to Hargreaves which is a small independent book store. There is a Carpe Librum that has been around for a little while but that I've not had time to visit yet. I like the Discount Christian Books store on Highway 66 between Kodak and Sevierville, and there's a little bookstore in the "Red Roof" mall in Pigeon Forge where you can sometimes find some great buys. I recently was introduced to White Pine Books which is within 20 miles of my home. (I definitely prefer McKay's though.)

I shop at Amazon fairly regularly. (It is rather convenient. I just click, and I'm there. My books arrive in 2 business days and sometimes as early as the next day.) I go book shopping in Knoxville about once a month or so.

I have attended some bookstore events, but since they are a distance from my home, I don't frequent them. I have viewed the events on LibraryThing Local, but I have not attended anything as a result of it.

Why Tuesday Thingers

Today's Tuesday Thingers question is:

What other weekly memes or round robins do you participate in? Is this the only one? Why Tuesday Thingers and not some other weekly Tuesday meme? Or do you do more than one?

The only other weekly meme in which I sometimes participate is Wordless Wednesday. I do participate in some monthly and semi-monthly ones such as the Carnival of Genealogy and in some of the book challenges.

Why Tuesday Thingers? Because I love LibraryThing and I love books!

Tuesday Thingers is the only Tuesday meme in which I participate.

Tuesday Thingers - July 29, 2008

Today's question is about LibraryThing cataloging sources.

Today's question: Cataloging sources. What cataloging sources do you use most? Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources, or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most things through LT's almost 700 sources?

I use Amazon for most of the mass-market fiction because academic libraries just don't have it. For other things, I tend to use Library of Congress, Ohiolink, ILCSO (Illinois libraries), and ACCESS Pennsylvania most. I have a lot of New England things and will often check New England Library Consortium for them first. I have a lot of East Tennessee items and will check Knox County (Tennessee) Public Library for those. I once had something published in Ireland and was able to find a library over there. I have had to enter a few by hand, but sometimes I'm just too lazy to keep adding libraries to check them. I know that a few things like genealogy conference syllabi and family histories that are "non-published" are just not going to be there so I tend to add those manually. I technically have over 200 manual entries, but most of them fall into the categories above. I also find myself entering far less by hand now than I did a year ago.

Tuesday Thingers

This is the first time I've participated in this meme. I saw it today at Boston Bibliophile.

Last week I asked what was the most popular book in your library- this week I'm going to ask about the most unpopular books you own. Do you have any unique books in your library- books only you have on LT? How many? Did you find cataloging information on your unique books, or did you hand-enter them? Do they fall into a particular category or categories, or are they a mix of different things? Have you ever looked at the "You and none other" feature on your statistics page, which shows books owned by only you and one other user? Ever made an LT friend by seeing what you share with only one other user?

I found 302 of my 1411 titles in LibraryThing were unique to my library. Many of my unique titles are from my genealogical books (especially surname-specific or locality-specific ones) or from my cookbook collection. (Most of those which were unique were locally published titles.) I have manually entered 222 titles; however, I often think creatively about which libraries might have a title before giving up! I have occasionally looked at the you and one other user page. In fact, I did tonight and discovered that my best friend and I share a book that we probably both purchased on a trip to San Diego a few years ago. I will have to say that I'm going to have to communicate with one of the others that I spotted on there who obviously shares an interest in Monroe County, Mississippi history and genealogy.

Boston Diary - June 12, Part 1

Sorry to be late in getting yesterday's ventures posted, but I was tired by the time I got back to the room to post anything.

Thursday was the final day of the conference itself. The day began with devotions. Then we had our final keynote address. The speaker was Tim Spalding of LibraryThing. Here is Tim with the LibraryThing groupies (as we introduced ourselves).



There was a business meeting later in the morning, a luncheon/awards ceremony at lunch, and two presentation sessions in the afternoon (including one that I made). The liberal arts section leadership team met briefly after the last presentation, but pretty soon, we were all boarding buses to head to the Quincy Harbor for a cruise with hor d'ourvres and desserts. This is the clock tower in the harbor area.
Here are the librarians waiting in the breezier part of the harbor area until time to board the ship.

This is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the harbor area with some more of us waiting in the shade!

Time to board. Here we are standing in line!

Aboard the ship!
Tonya and Jennifer share dessert!
Woodie.
Upper East Tennessee public librarians!

LibraryThing vs. GoodReads

DearMYRTLE has a post discussing LibraryThing and GoodReads. I am a LibraryThing enthusiast. Part of my enthusiasm comes from the librarian in me. I have only recently begun to play with GoodReads. It's okay, but it seems to serve a slightly different niche than LibraryThing. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about GoodReads, but I want more information on my book. I've been using LibraryThing long enough that I'm much more comfortable with it than GoodReads. I do wish that the genealogy groups were more active. However, the ability to browse similar libraries is extremely helpful (and fun). I've asked several of my real-life or blogging friends to be their LibraryThing friend, but some of them appear to have entered a portion of their library and then forgotten about LibraryThing (even some of those who paid the $25 to become lifetime members). I was thrilled a few months ago when there were genealogical titles for early reviewing. I'm just sad that I didn't get the title I really, really, really wanted and that has been on my wish list for awhile. I hope more genealogical publishers will send review copies to LibraryThing. I'm just now beginning to explore the reviewing options. I've added reviews of the last few titles I have read. My focus for awhile was on entering my library. I know that I've still got some titles to add, but I've got to figure out which titles were not in my prior book database. I like LibraryThing because it is online. This means that I don't have to be on the computer that has the database to search it; I just have to have Internet access. I do wish there were some private fields available to us (other than a comment field) so that we could track loans or suppression fields so that we can keep books which we have withdrawn from our libraries in the database so that we don't "repurchase" them but so that it doesn't display as a part of our library. About all you can presently do is tag it as "withdrawn." This would also enable you to add books that you have ordered but not received. I would also like a price field to record the value of the book for insurance purposes. I, like many other librarians, have adopted LibraryThing, and while I may continue to play with GoodReads, I doubt it will ever become my program of choice.

LibraryThing updates book view

LibraryThing has made some changes to its book pages. While I'd gotten used to the old, I think I'll like the new better. I haven't had time to really use them for a long period of time, but I see some improvements that I'm already welcoming. You'll find my catalog at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/thornton37814. I've seen suggestions before that genealogists might use LibraryThing at some point as a means of requesting a lookup to see if a book is worth ordering on Interlibrary Loan via their local library or purchasing for themselves. I've seen no requests to date for lookups in my large collection of history and genealogy books, but I can certainly see that as an option some day to replace some of the tools such as "Books We Own."