I’m off to help make jam and pickles at church for our annual holiday bazaar–a wonderful, peaceful, fun experience because I do not have to make a single decision; I chop, peel, stir, measure, wash, strain, and ladle under strict supervision from the Jam Ladies–but I had a thought about LibraryThing, and the thought leaked out onto a discussion list, and I got an interesting answer.
The thought I thunk was this: what about entering library books into LibraryThing? Though LT is primarily about the books we “own,” I consider myself part of a book if I have read it. It may not be a book I physically own–with the ink stripe on its spine–but it is a book that has melted into my experience like butter into bernaise.
It turns out, by way of a certain mouse, that I am not the first person to have that thought. Search LibraryThing for tags for “library books” or “library book,” and up pop a number of items. From talking to Tim Spalding, I know this kind of adaptation of LibraryThing will be leading to new features in LT. (Yes, I could do this in BookCrossing, but that’s a site that never took off for me.)
I will discuss this creative misuse of LibraryThing when I give talks or write about my meme/manifesto, The User is not Broken. (Oh, and I’ve heard a couple of online scribes say they don’t like manifestos; so don’t read them. Pushy, finger-pointy manifestos play their own role in any revolution.) People are often quite smart.
(I stop short of referring to the “wisdom of crowds”; after all, the crowds elected George Bush–and that’s the least dramatic historical example I am thinking of. I think of “hive mind” as a concept most appealing to WASPs and other majority groups; and if you’re not of the majority in some way, you dig what i mean.)
But I digress. I’d love to see “I read this book” as a dinglebob to click in LT, and I think there’s some room here for distinguishing among types of ownership (intellectual, physical, current, past, future), but I will start using the “library book” tag on books I’ve read but do not own the treeware for. Prediction: if LT developed this feature, the reviews would skew downward (which is a Good Thing). I only own a five-star collection–but sisters and brothers, let me tell you about the books I returned last week..!
Posted on this day, other years:
- Free Range Beer, Powerpoint, Writing, and Suitcases - 2008
- Whoops! - 2007
- Del.icio.us link of the day for November 4th - 2007
- Ontology is Miscellaneous; SJSU LIS Student in NY Times - 2007
- The Prodigal SWAG! - 2005
- A Conference Booth, from the Other Side - 2005
- Michael Stephens' Blog Survey, and Away to CLA - 2005
- Say Yes to RSS - 2004
- This Uppity Lesbian Is Telling You to Blame Someone Else - 2004
I agree that if you have read a book it becomes part of your experience. Library Thing is a great place to catalog these reading experiences especially for forgetful minds, like mine.
I would add, if LT doesn’t have it already, an “I want to read this book” button. I have the hardest time remembering books that I see mentioned on blogs or whatever and want to check out!
Dorothea, so right! In Amazon I use the cart, and in Netflix the queue. LT doesn’t have that acquisition function, so a simple tag (that rolled over when you rated a book) would be good.
MediaManager allows for statuses–unread, reading, read–that are kind of interesting to think about as well.
Yes! Not an “I want to buy this” per se, but an “I want to read this.” A social software reading list.
I have 2 different LT accounts–one for books I own; one for books I’ve read but do not own. I’m keeping them separate out of curiosity, to see how the various statistics vary between the two sets. Most of my owned stuff is in theology and spirituality and ministry; I read a lot of other stuff but rarely actually buy it.
If you go into the “edit” part of a book, you can put in dates for acquired, started, and ended. Not as easy as a dinglebob (nice word, btw), but more accurate.
Myself? I use tags – borrowed for books I don’t own but have in my possession for some reason, wishlist for books I don’t own but want to, and read for books I’ve actually finished.
I agree; consumption is far more interesting than ownership!
I use Library Thing exclusively as a way to keep track of my book consumption. Things I’ve read this year are marked with the tag “read in 06”; things I want to read are tagged “to read” and usually accompanied by the tag “via:whoever-recommended-this.” (I also tag my Blinklist bookmarks this way.)
Even better would be an easy button to add to your catalog for “add to my readinglist in LT.”
And I love manifestos! Perhaps we’ll need a “Manifesto Thing….” 😉
Righty-ho on the easy button: that’s the natural progression from the varied workarounds (or creative misuse) noted above. The status of an item is distinct from its acquisition date (or should be!)…
Have you tried All Consuming? There you can track what books you have read (including when you started and when you finished). You can write reviews and add tags. You can also get an RSS feed for your Web page or blog. It links to Amazon (I believe there is a corporate connection via 43 Things), so all the metadata comes from there. The down side is that you don’t get the links to library catalogs and library metadata that you do on Library Thing.
BTW, have you posted anything about your new POW and what you’ll be doing? I’ve seen a few hints, but if there was more than that, I missed it. Inquiring minds and all that.