Social Book Cataloguing Sites
Publishers Weekly compares three book cataloguing sites: LibraryThing.com, Shelfari.com and GoodReads.com. These sites allow users to keyword tag and comment on books they own or have read. The oldest of the sites, LibraryThing, has been around for a couple of years — a long time in internet terms — and publishers and book retailers are finally beginning to take an interest, either by investing in the sites or by providing members with advance review copies of forthcoming titles.
The PW article tries to make distinctions between the three services (the unfortunately named LibraryThing has by far the most members) but for me largely fails to do so at the user level. Below are screen shots of the sites’ intro pages.
>> A previous post on LibraryThing
Posted: August 1st, 2007 under books, community, research, webwork.
Comments: 4
Comments
Comment from Sephyroth
Time: August 1, 2007, 10:06 am
I’ve only used LibraryThing, and I’ve found that, at times, it can be a bit on the slow side. However, I still think it’s a great site. I might just have to check into the other sites as well, though I don’t have that many books that I can catalog.
Comment from Danny
Time: August 1, 2007, 11:01 am
I personally love Shelfari.com.
Simply put, it’s easier to interact with other users.
Comment from Nancy
Time: August 1, 2007, 3:05 pm
I’m afraid that I’ve never seen the point of cataloging your books on line. Of course, I am always trading in my old books and getting new ones so my list would be obsolete in no time at all. I posted some of my books on Library Thing and looked at the discussion groups and decided that it took too much time away from actually reading, and, in my case, painting.
Comment from Conrad
Time: August 6, 2007, 11:59 am
Another comparative review can be found at Zenoli.net; perhaps it’s worth comparing comparisons…
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