LibraryThing.com

When I began working for Harbor Regional Center in 1985, I discovered that the main Torrance Public Library was on my route to work and was, in fact, only about a mile from the office. That made it a perfect place to visit at lunch hour or on my way home when I wanted some reading material. Up to that point in my life, I had been an avid reader and regular purchaser of books. The bookshelves in our house overflowed with the evidence of my eclectic taste in books. But with the discovery of the Torrance Library I discovered the joy of letting someone else purchase, maintain, and store my books for me. However, not having the physical book on the shelf meant that I had to create and maintain a database of the books I had read in case I wanted to refer back to them.

Now it appears that I may stop keeping this database current. I have just discovered (with the help of the Sacramento Bee) a new web site called LibraryThing.com. This site has all the advantages of my old database in allowing me to enter when I started the book and finished it, my thoughts or review of the book, and call number. In addition, it looks up the book on Amazon and other major book databases and fills in the information I might be too lazy to enter or add the cover image that I didn't even have access to when I start my database.

I can also choose to share my database with others or find other people who also have this book in their library so that we can discuss our thoughts. It's like a gigantic, worldwide literary club. The site is even designed to offer suggestions "If you liked this book, you may also like this one..." sort of like Amazon does with your purchasing habits. Of course unlike the official library database, you don't have to add books to your LibraryThing catalog unless you want to so there is not an issue of privacy. You can even create a "public" catalog to share with others and a "confidential" catalog that no one else can connect to you.

The only problem I see right now is that a free account only allows 200 books to be cataloged. We have more than 2,000 books in our physical library and I have borrowed, read, and cataloged more than 2,000 books from the library. But maybe it will prove valuable enough to pay $25 for a lifetime membership.