One of the sessions I attended at the American Library Association conference in June was a presentation by Tim Spalding, developer of LibraryThing. He was part of a group of three presenters in a session entitled, “Harnessing the Hive: Social Networks in Libraries.” I’d heard quite a bit about this new cataloging tool, but wasn’t sure how I could use it. As I listened to Tim, and watched him demonstrate just how useful and easy this is to use, I decided to give it a try.
For nearly 11 years, I’ve been part of a small group of people who produce a weekly radio show on a community radio station on KZUM. Our program, BookTalk, is described as the show “for people who love to read and love to talk about what they read.” I thought it might be helpful for me to start listing books in LibraryThing as I finished them. I would then have an easy reference point for books to talk about on the radio.
So I created “My Library” in LibraryThing. I added some favorite titles I’d read awhile ago, but for the most part, I added titles as I finished them. This has replaced my boring Excel spreadsheet I’ve used to track books for our radio show. LibraryThing is easy to create and update, and easier to share with others. A free account allows you to catalog up to 200 books. The cataloging provides “social data” so I can see how many other personal libraries include my titles, reviews, and conversations about a book. I can also see whose libraries contain a lot of books similar to mine. What a great way to find books to read!!
Larger issue – will this kind of collaborative cataloging (folksonomy) replace Dewey in libraries? Some libraries have already made a change. According to Library Journal, the Danbury Public Library in Connecticut was the first to offer access to LibraryThing’s “collaborative book cataloging” as a service to their customers. (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6445695.html) Since then other libraries have signed on, and LibraryThing continues to grow — over 200 million books have been cataloged!
For those of you that are intrigued by LibraryThing and its possibilities, ask around and find one of the over 100 NE public librarians that participated in the Social Web workshop this fall. For part of the day we signed up for LibraryThing and played around with its features. (Watch our training portal for additional sessions to be offered around the state in the spring.) Additionally, you can see how the Commission is using LibraryThing by checking out our account.
I’m not a librarian and have listed my modest collection on both LT and bookarmy
There’s a good sense of community and some authors, established and less so appear to being involved.
As ever, there’s quite a few sites to pick from now.