Comments on: Rediscovering LibraryThing

By: hair today gone tomorrow

hair today gone tomorrow — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:23:11 +0000

It's the obsession today with cataloguing everything we can - book lovers want to catalogue their shelves, people can post their every move in twitter and even mums can post pics of their chilren on sites like gurgle. Now it's so easy online with these tools. Having said that, I love a good old fashioned book list written by hand...might take a bit longer but it gives a bit of individuality!

By: JoeGould

JoeGould — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:33:59 +0000

I too enjoy listing . I was also looking for recommendations from other users, although it can become a little annoying.

By: A conversation with Tim Spalding about LibraryThing « Jon Udell

A conversation with Tim Spalding about LibraryThing « Jon Udell — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:37:53 +0000

[...] a question that neither of us felt we were able to address very well. As mentioned in comments here, though, it does warrant further consideration. A lot of folks, me included, feel that the [...]

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:47:35 +0000

> Oh, now I look like a jerk!

Not at all, awareness and discovery and adoption are key issues.

> you don’t really get something social—be it technology or, say,
> dating—until you do it yourself. Reading about it doesn’t count.

Exactly. And that being the case, how can we arrange for people to sample new things in non-trivial ways? Portable context has to be part of the answer.

> I concede the problems with friction, but I also think there’s
> a case to be made *for* it. Depending on what goes up and what
> doesn’t I’ll try to re-express my point on my blog. I feel like
> I didn’t say it right, and that it would probably benefit from
> some time in the head-oven too.

I wound up leaving that stuff out because we were already past the 1-hour mark, but I’d look forward to some cross-blog discussion because I agree there’s something there that we didn’t do justice too. The interview should be up sometime tomorrow BTW.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:26:49 +0000

Oh, now I look like a jerk! Anyway, my point was that I hadn’t looked at Library Lookup in years either. I find this happens to me all the time. I’m out of touch on the very subject I’m supposed to be an expert on. With something like LibraryThing I find that second-hand information too easily drives out the need to explore something on your own. So, for example, a lot of librarians have seen a few slides in a talk or something in Library Journal, but you don’t really get something social—be it technology or, say, dating—until you do it yourself. Reading about it doesn’t count.

I don’t know what you’re going to keep and what you’re going to cut, but we got into some debate about friction. I concede the problems with friction, but I also think there’s a case to be made *for* it. Depending on what goes up and what doesn’t I’ll try to re-express my point on my blog. I feel like I didn’t say it right, and that it would probably benefit from some time in the head-oven too.

It was a fun interview!

By: Jay Datema

Jay Datema — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:53:03 +0000

Ah, glad to hear Amazon wishlist syncing is coming–have pestered Tim about that for a little while now.

See, LibraryLookup works so well, it’s hard to think of LibraryThing as a place for wishlist items..

By: Deb

Deb — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:19:54 +0000

I went back to my LibraryThing today as I was realizing the one thing I *thought* it was missing was a ‘to be read’ option. Well, I found it. Now all I have to do is edit 90% of the books on my LibraryThing bookshelf. I wonder if there is a report to get a list of the to be read books. I could definitely use that.

BTW, thanks for the reminder about LibraryThing’s existence.

By: Stefan Hayden

Stefan Hayden — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:53:09 +0000

I agree that LibraryThing is great. I've been a supporter for a long time. Sadly I am also not a obsessive cataloger. I tend to be more interested in keeping track of books I want to read, have read and am currently reading. While you can do that in LibraryThing it's not the focus and it takes a lot of mouse clicks to do. Some other sites have more of a focus on reading like GoodReads, Shelfari and ReadingSocial. But even these sites don't seem to have enough focus on simple book triage to really make me happy. I tend to like my tools to do one thing and do it well and all these sites seem to try and incorporate too many features with out just focusing on one function.