Week 8, Thing #19: LibraryThing is *MY* Thing

As a library media technician at a middle school library, I input new acquisitions to our library catalog daily. When I began adding books to my LibraryThing account, the whole process of searching books with the intent of procuring its summary and MARC information was second nature to me. I do have to admit though, cataloging with LibraryThing is a lot more fun. The two things I like the most about LibraryThing are being able to upload a picture of the covers of my books and tagging each of them with my own categories. Mainly, I enjoy the ability of creating my personal online library catalog. When I added my favorite book Little Women, to my library, I was a little dismayed to initially find that the first listing for the book did not have the same cover as the book that I owned. Not to be discouraged, however, I added it anyways and then searched the ISBN number of my book as an afterthought. I had bought the book sixteen years ago, and I naively assumed that I would have to acquiesce to the book cover that LibraryThing (or Amazon.com) uploaded at first. To my surprise and delight, I discovered the cover to the book I owned! It was like stumbling upon an old class photo of an old friend! I rejoiced over the silly, sentimental thing but I am happy that this cover is featured in my personal library.

After getting over the excitement of LibraryThing's ability to individualize libraries, I explored its features for connecting with other book lovers. Within my library I could see that my favorite book, Little Women, is shared by 8873 members. By clicking on the "Talk" tab and "Your books" I can discover what other people are reading and discussing and even which discussions mention any of the books in my library. In order to find the specific posts on just Little Women, I have been clicking on the main discussion and then using CRTL + F to find where my favorite book is exactly mentioned. I also found that you could find talk about the book when you looked at its record in your library, and to the left click on "Conversations" (which are the same results when going through the "Talk" tab). Most of these conversations, however, merely mentioned the book as their favorite or not so favorite and did not go in depth about it so much. Perhaps it was just for Little Women, but I enjoyed reading the member reviews better than the conversations on it.

LibraryThing-ing might turn out to be one of my new hobbies. Other than that, I shall explore more to see how this catalog fun would prove useful for public and school libraries.