As I mentioned in this post, I have, as of the first week of January, achieved one of my “theoretical” New Year’s Resolutions – my books are officially cataloged. The project took the better part of several days, but overall it was far less painful than I had anticipated, thanks to the joys of modern technology, and of course, now I wonder why it took me so long to get around to it, although I know that one reason for my procrastinating was the difficulty in deciding which of the various catalog sites I wanted to use.
I have a lot of my books already registered on BookCrossing, but I still hold to their “read and release” tenets and only place books there if I know I won’t be keeping them after I’m done. But I’d been inactive in the “releasing” game for quite awhile by 2007, and hadn’t even registered books there since the fall of 2005. I picked it back up last summer, and am making most of my “releases” to members of my book club or as donations to the Friends of the Library bookstore. However, as I said, my BC “bookshelf” is an incomplete record, since it includes few books that I’ve kept and none of my vast TBR (“to-be-read”) collection, and those could all be part of my “library” at one of the book-catalog websites.
I was torn between two book sites, LibraryThing and GoodReads, but decided that GoodReads looked like it might be easier to get started with, and since I already had a small network of book friends there, there I went. I had actually registered there months ago, but had no books listed. This is where modern technology comes in; when you have a lot of books to add and want to do it fairly quickly, book information can be imported to the site from spreadsheets. The only essential info in that spreadsheet is the book’s ISBN identification number, which is usually easily found on the back cover with the bar code, and is always included on the copyright/publication data page. The site pulls the book data from the ISBN. Being an accountant, spreadsheets are one of my favorite tools, so I set up a very simple one with columns for ISBN, author, and title, filled it in, and imported it to the site. Once the books are imported and added, they can be tagged, assigned star ratings (0 to 5), and reviewed. (I should mention that I don’t just mean writing a review; sometimes the ISBN search brings up the wrong book, so confirm that you’ve really added what you meant to!) One thing that I noticed was how many books have been listed by members but not reviewed in detail. Unless I copy and/or link to the book-review posts on this blog, I doubt most of mine are going to have reviews listed either.
Book data that’s imported can also be exported to a new spreadsheet file, and I thought it would be useful to do that. Then I imported that book data to LibraryThing. I’m planning to run duplicate for awhile, but I suspect LibraryThing may win out in the long run. Now I’ve got full catalogs on two sites, plus a spreadsheet – I have gone from one extreme to the other. Each site seems to have its good points – GoodReads seems to emphasize the social-networking aspects more, but LibraryThing seems to be stronger as a straightforward catalog. LibraryThing also lets you edit the book data if it comes up wrong – say, as a foreign-language edition, or without a cover image – but GoodReads doesn’t. And one other thing you should know if you’re trying to make this decision is that LibraryThing charges for an account if you have more than 200 books listed. It’s not much – $10/year or $25/lifetime – but I didn’t check that out, even though it’s mentioned right on their homepage (good attention to detail on my part – not!) and was caught by surprise in the midst of importing data for 325 books.
One thing that both sites let you do is assign tags to your books to identify them in whatever ways you want – read, TBR, genre, etc. And one thing I found as I pulled books down to get their ISBNs is that a number of them had been TBR for years. Some of them had already been TBR for awhile when I moved them out to California from Tennessee over five years ago, and when I thought about it, I really had to wonder if they truly were TBR – and I decided that at this point, some of them really weren’t, at least not by me. Almost three dozen books in my library lists were donated to the Friends of the Library bookstore this weekend, and they’re tagged “unread” and “donated.” I had mixed feelings about doing this, but it seems like the right decision. I probably won’t miss them, since even in all this time on my shelves I hadn’t felt “called” to crack them open; in fact, I was feeling guilty for how long some of them had languished, and I don’t think “guilt” should be associated with books and reading unless it’s in terms of “guilty pleasure” escapism.
Between these not-to-be-read books and ones that I didn’t feel the need to keep for re-reading, I suspect that about a hundred books left my house this weekend. I hope they’ll find more willing readers. And if I ever do get the craving to read any of them after all, whether for the first or second time, I’m sure I’ll be able to find them somewhere. It seems a little ironic to me that the process of cataloging my book collection served as a catalyst for closing the book on some of it, but making more room on my real-life bookshelves can’t be a bad thing. I like the fact that I’ve now got a much more complete history of my reading activity, and it’s going to be much easier to keep a handle on what I haven’t read yet and choose what to read next. Having gotten this project all set up, maintaining it should be very easy, and I really like the fact that I can say I’ve started the New Year with one planned project actually accomplished!
Wow.
May I say again, Wow.
Imagine having accomplished a resolution by the 9th of Jan!
We bow down to you, Oh Great Florinda.
WG Heh. I don’t actually make New Year’s Resolutions. I REALLY wanted to get this done, though.
I can’t decide whether to take the momentum and run with it, or sit back and relax for the rest of the year, knowing that I got one thing done. 🙂
I quite enjoyed cataloging all the books in my personal library. I found books I didn’t know we had and even a couple of duplicates as a result of my husband and I joining our collections, which I hadn’t noticed all these years.
I tried Goodreads, but I was more interested in the cataloging rather than the social aspect–and then when I went to import my books from a spreadsheet to Goodreads, over half of the books wouldn’t take. That was the final deciding factor for me that I wouldn’t bother with another cataloging site. I tried Shelfari recently because so many of my friends prefer that one. I canceled my account there today. I’m definitely a LibraryThing woman.
Funny … I went back to the entry you linked to here and took the test – I’m a Generation Jones too, it seems, even though my birthdate is 1970. Must be because I don’t do all the bells and whistles of technology, the texting, music and Facebooking. But as for work philsophy, I am sooo much more generation Y than my true X.
Pam – I think that link was in this post. Hey, we’ll let you into Gen-Jones! 🙂 I’m not sure this stuff means much anyway, other than as convenient shorthand.
Literary Feline – I think there’s a good chance that LibraryThing will end up being my main “thing” too, and it’s partly on your recommendation (in comments on a BTT post), so thank you! :-). The social stuff at GoodReads is fun, but like you, my main purpose is the cataloging. I did my original imports to GoodReads in small batches, since you’d mentioned having issues with it, and I did have some problems with books coming in wrong or not at all. That stuff is much easier to edit and fix in LibraryThing, I must say.