Catalog Your Books Online with Library Thing
Want to catalog your personal collection of books and share your list to friends and other people? You can do so with the use of the Library Thing (Beta), “an online service to help people catalog their books easily, find people with similar libraries, get suggestions from people with your tastes and so forth.”
I signed up for a free account to test and explore it. If you are a not a librarian, you would definitely embrace the idea and would start cataloging your books. But being a cataloger by profession, I have some reservation regarding the concept though. Library Thing could be simply describe as Friendster via Books. It is a social networking tools. And as such anybody can use it. It is therefore tantamount to saying that anybody can be a cataloger.
But then not. Cataloging is not simply publishing a certain collection of books, assigning a randomly selected uncontrolled tags to identify it and publishing it online via an online software.
Cataloging is a process. It involves more than describing and tagging a book. It is an analytical process that adheres to international standards and guidelines.
Library Thing is a good social networking service. It’s fun and it’s helpful. Use it if you must.
Comments
Facebook Badge
Twitter Grader
Blog Ego
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other — James Madison
awesome business cards
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy — H L Mencken
Everything is drive-through In California, they even have a burial service called Jump-In-The-Box — Wil Shriner