Look at me, eating my words

I might not like LibraryThing for a range of what I consider to be good, librarianly, search-and-organisation based reasons, but it isn't 'alf addictive. And useful - the different default collections, including 'wishlist' and 'read but unowned' neatly solve two problems: I don't really like keeping a wishlist on Amazon (I have pinko-liberal lentil-knitting views about what Amazon has done to local bookshops) and I like to keep a record of what I've read in libraries but am bad at doing so on paper (the notebook is never nearby when I want it). This new-found addiction is also driven in no small part by seeing what recommendations will appear when the collection is broader - at the moment a lot of suggested works are just further books in series that I already part own.

So without really meaning too, I'm up to 70-ish books now, and just by thinking about what I've got lying around at home. A methodical assault on the shelves might lead to the purchase of a life account. Not a lot to do with work in libraries, and a big ol' drain on my time. Oops.



Edited to add: I've just found the 'Local' tab, and it turns out that there's already an entry for the library in which I work. We've got some events coming up (as part of Open Cambridge), so I've added those. Every little publicity helps.

Thing 15: "What dreadful dole is here!"

So, the end of my last post saw me confused and infuriated by a LibraryThing that didn't really live up to my expectations.  But whispersinthewilderness has reassured me that I can get full book information when I have an account, and in compliance with the 23 Things instructions I've signed myself up.

Adding books (even after photographing my most difficult bookshelf and cataloguing it remotely without dates or ISBNs) is easy enough, although I'd still like to be able to limit searches and filter results by date.  Some of the more obscure things I own were found successfully, even my most favourite book ever, a German translation of a Mexican novel that I bought for a few Marks from a stand outside a corner bookshop in a suburb of Bonn one rainy November lunchtime in 2001 (oh, happy days!). I did have to search a number of German library catalogues to find it, and it turns out that I'm the only LibraryThinger to have it, so I hope everyone's impressed with my recheché tastes!

Weirdly, it's not possible to add a book to your own library from its page in LibraryThing - when you click on the 'add to my library' link you have to choose a databse to search for it.  But for obscure things, it's hard to know which database to choose, and for ephemera it can be necessary to add the details from scratch. So adding it can take ages, even when other people have already clearly got it.  I don't really understand why a new entry can't just be linked to what's already there. So some of my collection of comic strip pamphlets haven't made it on because I'm too lazy.  This is a shame - it's for the really obscure things that I think it would be most fun to connect with other readers.

I've added an arbitrary selection of 36 books from my shelves, including my small collection of Little Princes, but I'm not sure I'll ever keep this up, either for new acquisitons or retrospectively.  For the nosey, here's a widget of my shelves:

Overall, I can see that there's a lot of good in LibraryThing, for libraries and librarians, library users and book lovers.  But I'm not sure that it and I can overcome our rocky start together.

Thing 14: "I understand not what you mean by this"

So. LibraryThing. I should like LibraryThing, I really should.   It ticks lots of my boxes:

• I like cataloguing, and like to have my own things organised;
• there's lots to play with (as whispersinthewilderness says I could be kept tinkering there for weeks);
• social interaction grows out of interest in books - it's not just social for the sake of it;
• it was developed by someone who's still involved (Tim Spalding) and not bought out by anyone big;
• it's large enough to generate useful user-generated tags and reviews (in contrast to most OPACs it exceeds the necessary critical mass of participants.  It will be interesting to see if new BL OPAC will exceed this threshold or not).

The two articles set as Cam23 reading (although now several years old) made interesting arguments in favour of it as a personal and library tool, and were echoed (though in less detail) by a recent CILIP Gazette article (link to online Gazette Flash version).

Looking at the two example libraries, I can sort of see the use.  As see Magistra notes, the CSL Library page seems to have been abandoned a couple of years ago, and is maybe a lesson it keeping things updated or getting rid of them altogether.  But the Nuffield College list of new accessions look useful - there's lots of information on the profile page about what's on LibraryThing, why, and about the library more generally - though it would be interesting to know if they're also used.  I've not chased up any of the libraries mentioned in the Gazette article for integrating LibraryThing tags directly into their OPACs, but that certainly sounds good in principal.

Thus far LibraryThing gets a tentative C+/B from me.  Time to try it out in a more practical way; let me take you on a little journey through the last few days' experimentation with this Thing...

Experiment 1: Authority Headings, or, Looking For An Author
I tried searching for "William Shakespeare" and this is what I got (click to magnify).

Yes, that's a large, undifferentiated list of names, one of which is "William Shakespeare", and the rest of which are typos, name headings with bonus added extra titles, and a few valid occurrences of Shakespeare in combination with other information.  I want to find out what there is from and about Shakespeare - how do I know where to click?  There's no indication of how many hits there are for each result, and it looks like I may have to check them separately to find what I'm looking for.  No thanks.

(At this point, I thought I was maybe being unfair to LibraryThing, and searched a bunch of OPACs for Will Shakespeare.  The results weren't always perfect, but they were a good deal better, as shown here.)

In the interests of Science, I clicked on one of LibraryThing's random typos to see what would happen.  It turns out that all those "Wiliam Shakespeer"s are actually linked to one entry with correct spelling, biography, bells and assorted whistles.  So LibraryThing's not a disorganised mess, it just presents itself that way...

Experiment 2: I look for a book
So, I've discovered that I can find my favourite author, even if the denizens of LibraryThing have been misspelling his or her name with wild abandon.  But what about looking for one of his books?  I try another search, this time for Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud (vintage sci-fi aficiandos please note - to be re-published this September).  And, lo! I find a work-level (or is that expression-level? I haven't mastered FRBR yet) description page, with tags and reviews and popularity ratings, and further assorted bells and whistles.  All very nice.  But I'd like to know more about this book, so I click on details.  Here I find out it's LC and Dewey classification numbers, subject headings and get a recap of user ratings etc.  But I'm not satisfied - I'd like to know when this book was published, and by whom.  Indeed, I see that it's been translated, too - can I find out more about those translations, or about the various English editions I know to have been printed?

Well... kinda.  The editions page tells me that there have been more editions than I can be bothered to count from the screen, and that some of them were in languages that clearly aren't English, and that many of these have ISBNs.  It also tells me how many of each copy is held by LibraryThingers.  But I still haven't found a single piece of publication information about this book.

Am I missing something?  Is there really no place, publisher or date of publication included?  I note that there's no option to order search results by date, nor any date box on the search page.  Am I the only bibliophile who's interested in publication information?  If I'm not, why is it so hard to uncover from LibraryThing? Or is it something I can only find out once I've signed up? If so, not letting me know it'll be there isn't encouraging me to join. I've considered not publishing this post because I must be making some really obvious mistake (I tried searching the help wiki too, to no avail), but, well, I trust Cam23ers to be kind in enlightening me.

Answers on a postcard, please.