A good friend asked me today an interesting question which– as we chatted– boiled down to this: is there room in your life for LibraryThing and Goodreads? Is it either or both, and more importantly (remember the sloth factor: ease = good!) how?
The answer is yes, both and here’s why and how
LibraryThing and Goodreads are completely compatible and unique in their usefulness because
LibraryThing is an excellent personal manager for your books. It is good to find groups and authors and interesting data, but especially its a very good way to manage your book collection.
I love the possibilities for small bookstores or Friends of the Library bookstores. The turnover would increase and the Friends groups would be a whole lot closer to knowing just what they had if they could enter donated book data, and get valuable information such as if the book is a first edition, how many others have it (how popular a book is, increases value), and everything you need to know in order to sell it. Not to mention good stuff like Library of Congress number, Dewey class, date of publication, and all the other types of things library-types like to know. The database is tied to the Library of Congress and Amazon.com to name a few, so the user simply enters the ISBN number or Library of Congress number…or heck just the title and author of the book and a selection of books appear for you to simply click and enter them into your new online catalog.
Cataloging your books is invaluable for many reasons, and its lovely to see your collection in full color digital form. The interest groups give you a chance to interact with other book lovers and to see what people are reading and talking about. Also there is an Authors Who LibraryThing group. Savvy marketing and fun for the rest of us, yeah?
Goodreads is brilliant. Your Friends’ comments on what they’re reading come into your own page right away. Its automatically a pool of not just yours, but all your friends’ books as well. I have librarian friends, so you can imagine how fun! Also, there is a place for you to write, if you are a writer. Your work is visible to the degree you wish, and the writing segment, to me, is very exciting.
Also, its a great readers advisory, if you ask me. I want to mose around what my friends have picked up, and to go off and see what everybody is saying about the Kite Runner. I have a ARC of Stephenie Meyer’s new book so I am now friended by Meyer fans. Its great. The main thrust of Goodreads is to share titles and thoughts about what we’re reading.
For example. George may read a lot, but not own many books. He checks his books out at the library or re-donates what he buys. He may have few actual books, so to look at his LibraryThing account, you may think he doesn’t read a lot, but if you go to his Goodreads account where he simply lists the books he’s read and is reading, you’ll find a whole lot more.
I was a LibraryThing user before I started using Goodreads, so I simply started importing my collection onto Goodreads. It was very simple.
