Thing #13 Library Thing

I found LibraryThing to be really simple to use. It took no time at all to get the books added. I think it would be a nice thing to use with my siblings/parents/friends who are always telling me what they're reading when we're in a restaurant or someplace where it's not convenient to write it down. When I got home I could look at their library and remember the title and add it to my list of "to be read."

I would have liked LibraryThing better if there were pictures of the covers of the older editions of the books, but I guess I'm a perfectionist. For my uses now it doesn't make much of a difference, but if I were compiling a collection of my library's holdings I would need the exact cover. Otherwise my patrons would say, "But it didn't look like that on the computer," and that would get tiresome.

How can you use LibraryThing for your library? I would have loved to have used it in my previous position. We had a relatively small collection that was kept in a back room and many people forgot it existed. We never had the time to catalog it properly and many of our patrons wouldn't want to get up out of their chairs to look on a shelf. They would have preferred looking on the computer first and then getting up if necessary. Sorry, it's the truth.

How else do you share booklists, etc. with library patrons? Since we didn't have an up to date list I would take the patron by the hand and bring them to the shelves. Or ask them as if it were a great secret I was letting them in on, "Have you seen our book room?"

Would LibraryThing offer an alternative? It would have been great. If we could have done 10 books a day or gotten an intern to add books it would not have taken a ton of time and I think I could have gotten the staffing approved for it.

How can your library use LibraryThing Local? I'm not much for events besides the friends of the library sales, but if it were automatically updated I would look at it and perhaps add an event to my list of things to do.

Could you use LibraryThing to organize your home book collection? If I did I think I would come to realize that I have a lot of weeding to do:) But it would save me from buying my kids the same book multiple times.