#11 A thing about LibraryThing

I've been to LibraryThing before and my account was still active. I've added some books but I find it frustrating that I can't do 'proper' catalogueing in it. Having the publication and dimensions fields put together is a bit annoying. I can't access marc. Can't figure out if I'm actually suppose to be able to or not. The tutorial doesn't have images the same as is visible on my part of LibraryThing. I can't find the 'Book information' for the library quality data. Is that something you get with a pay account? I only have 10 books on so far. It takes me a little while to put each up because, even though there are records available for each of the books I've chosen so far, I have to add extra info to improve them. Plus it bothers me that there is no authority files. Actually I can't see how you could have them on LibraryThing. You would just have to use your imagination a lot if you were trying to find everything that would normally be easy enough to find with authorised headings.

I don't mind the tags in this context. I don't like them (or index terms) on a regular library catalogue of any size. If you put Australia in an index term it isn't a useful way to search on a catalogue of 60,000 items specialising in Australian publications in an Australian library. In our library we filter out the index terms (653s). We add LC subjects if there aren't any or we add extras if they don't suit us. In the context of LibraryThing the tags become a visual way (in the cloud format) to get an idea of what is in a persons collection. Not a bad use.

Not being my work catalogue I can add other information that I think people might find useful, eg "Includes: How to make and use herb preparations, Glossary of medicinal effects and herbs that produce them, Plants applicable to various conditions and body organs, index by common name and Latin names, and bibliography."

It's all about context. LibraryThing is fine on the net as another social networking thing and an encouragement for people to read. It might be useful in a small library. I'd question it's usefulness as a model for a library of any size.

Anyway: Includes: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jayoval . More will be added later.

And, of course, 200 books doesn't go anywhere near my collection ......