I recently discovered LibraryThing, a site allowing you to catalog your personal library for, more practically, digital record keeping and for sharing with friends. It’s easy to use, entering ISBNs to pull up the correct book in your collection, and allows you to tag your books with identifiers that make sense to you. The first 200 books can be listed free of charge, thereafter an annual membership costs $10, while a lifetime membership is just $25.
Why take the time to catalog all the books you own? Arguably, you likely own the books you do because you like them (unless you’ve bought them to line your shelves and make you look smart). The site offers recommendations based on users with similar interests to you, hopefully springing suggestions on you that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself or discovered elsewhere. Also in the event a biblio-voleur takes all your books, you have a record of what needs to be replaced — I know, like anyone is stealing books these days.
At this point I have most of the books I’ve already read, that are housed in my apartment, listed (more than 250 at the moment, and I just have one more shelf to log.) There are probably at least another 40 or 50 books on the to-be-read list that will crossover upon completion. And of course, there’s the remaining box of books sitting in my parents’ house waiting to be shipped to me). I do need to go back and update the editions that I’ve listed in certain places, but it’s otherwise correct.
Do you know what’s sitting on your shelves?
