Friday, January 19, 2007

My Personal Library

You may or may not know that I am a bibliophile. I love books. I read them; I collect them; I give them as gifts. I love books.

A few months ago I attempted to start cataloging them on my home computer. It wasn't difficult but I kept thinking that there should be an easier way...something online perhaps. Well, for some bizarre reason, I googled "book catalogue" and up popped LibraryThing.com. It peaked my interest. I clicked and read about what they had to offer.

Here's what it says on their site:

LibraryThing is a full-powered cataloging application, searching the Library of Congress, all five national Amazon sites, and more than 60 world libraries. You can edit your information, search and sort it, "tag" books with your own subjects, or use the Library of Congress and Dewey systems to organize your collection.

If you want it, LibraryThing is also an amazing social space, often described as "MySpace for books" or "Facebook for books." You can check out other people's libraries, see who has the most similar library to yours, swap reading suggestions and so forth. LibraryThing also makes book recommendations based on the collective intelligence of the other libraries.

So...I joined. And I'm happy. I love this site almost as much as I love my books. They even have a "add to your blog" feature. (I've done it, you can see it on the right.)

Granted, since I just noticed this today there are only about 10 books listed in my library...mostly plays, of course (being at work, that's all I have at my desk.)

Check it out. Click HERE and start your own online library.

Talk about nerdish fun, huh?

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