The Library Thing is one of the most useful finds on the internet for me. For a long time I was looking for some kind of software to catalog all my books. After a good amount of searching on the WWW I found the Book Collector, which is a stand alone desktop application in which you can catalog your book collection. I used it for a while... in fact I entered all my books into the database (including my Marathi books). The software was good, it had features like entering books by their ISBN, classifying books by genre etc. However after a motherboard and hard drive crash I lost the whole database (and learned a good lesson about backing up data).Things were in that state for a while even after I installed a new motherboard and formatted my hard drive. Then while browsing through some book reviews, I came across a link to The Library Thing. It is an online community of bibliophiles which allows you to catalog your book collection. But it is much more than that. You can...
- enter books into your database by simply entering the ISBN
- tag your books
- write and share reviews for books you have read
- discuss books and related topic on the online groups
- search for books similar to the ones you have read
- share your library on your blog or website through blog widgets
The service is totally free, but the free account lets you enter only up to 200 books. The yearly membership is $10 and lifetime membership is $25. So far I have really enjoyed the service and I recommend it to anyone who loves books. Although I am still using the free membership I am thinking seriously about the lifetime membership!
Also check out these cool blog widgets for my library:
The tag cloud for my books:
Technorati Tags: Books, Library, Book Collection, Library Thing
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