We love books. Too much. This is probably no secret, particularly if you’ve seen our office. And our spare bedroom. And the living room. And the foyer.
But trust me when I say that the current volume of books is a major improvement over the even greater number we had when we moved into the house a few years back. Since then, we’ve had regular literary purges. And as a result, our shelves are more orderly, populated with the remaining books that both of us really appreciate. The rest of the books? The unwanted? They’re out in the garage, waiting for a new fate that involves a used book store or some mass donation to Goodwill.
One of the big decisions we made about the books was one of organization, of recording the books we have. To this end, Nikki found a place online that sold reconfigured CueCats, those little devices that were supposed to be the missing link between magazine advertisement and the World Wide Web. They failed at that, but with a little modification, a CueCat can be used as an inexpensive barcode scanner. We ordered one, hooked it up to the iBook and fed our books (and several CDs) into Delicious Library.
This is all well and good, provided the ancient and troubled iBook doesn’t suddenly up and die. Given that such sudden tragedy could happen, it only makes sense to backup the data elsewhere.
So what about an online option? There are many available, actually. Shelfari, GoodReads and LibraryThing. Apparently, LibraryThing is the weapon of choice for actual librarians. This is probably because of the sheer volume of statistical data available for any book entered. GoodReads has a more personable user interface, resembling Yelp with its profile photos and chatty review sections. Shelfari has a great name, but I’ve seen nothing about it that stands apart from the other two.
Both GoodReads and LibraryThing make it remarkably easy to add books by the batchload. Either one employs an import method that simply takes a (comma-delimited) text file and scans the file for ISBNs. GoodReads does insist on an “ISBN” column header, but that’s nothing much to ask. After uploading the file, the ISBNs are matched against available databases. This is one place where GoodReads has the upper hand, because they process theirs imports much quicker. LibraryThing can take up to an hour or more for a stack of one hundred. Of course, this is probably because LibraryThing is cross-checking those ISBNs against several resources, gathering all matter of bookish minutiae. GoodReads, I believe, depends almost entirely on Amazon. (I think. Will have to confirm.)
Oh, and another thing. LibraryThing has a limit of 200 books for non-paying members. GoodReads, it seems, has no limit and has no paid member option.
And so, I’m going to test drive both GoodReads and LibraryThing. We’ll see how I get along with both over the next few weeks, adding occasionally and participating with the communities in either one.
If you’re already a part of either service, feel free to “friend” me and invite me to see your books and so on. Also, if you’ve already spent some quality time with either service (or with Shelfari, even), leave a comment and let me know how it has been.
