HelpThing›Your books

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[edit] Overview

"Your books" is at the heart of what LibraryThing is all about—it's where you go to search and browse the books you've added to your LibraryThing "catalog." You can customize what information you display, slice and dice the data in various ways, as well as edit much of your data right on the page (just double click in most fields).

You can also view other members' books in this format, if they have chosen to make their library public.

[edit] Features

[edit] The Top Bar

• Collections. Your books can be divided into "collections." This area shows which collection you're looking at. You can change that, and edit your collections.
• List displays your books in a grid format, with each book displayed in a row, and various information fields displayed in the columns.
• Cover displays only the covers of your books. More information about a book is available by clicking on the cover.
• Tags shows the tags you've used, alongside a list of your collections. You can sort and edit your tags en masse on this page too.
• Style shows which catalog style (A-E) you are currently using. Different styles show different fields. The "cog," after the E style, allows you to edit your styles.
• Sort changes how your books are sorted. You can also click the blue column-titles to sort, and click them again to reverse the sort order. Subsorting is achieved by clicking two in a row, eg., to sort by Title, then Author, click Author, then click Title.
• Power edit facilitates changing some information for many books at once.
• Print goes to a printable version of the catalog in a new window. You do the actual printing by activating your browser's "Print" option. NOTE that this tool is ONLY visible and working with your own catalog, and ONLY if you are signed in!
• 
  Search helps you search your catalog. The drop-down provides various search options. Use the drop-down to search within a particular field (only with titles, for instance) - the default is all fields. Clear a search by 'x'ing out the search term in the top left of the catalog (be sure you're scrolled all the way up).

[edit] Navigation

• Previous/next page takes you to the previous/next page of your catalog.
• Page numbers takes you to the specified page of your catalog. Clicking on "show all" will display all page numbers. There's no easy way to "jump to" a specified place in your catalog (i.e. "S" authors); you either have to search for what you're looking for, or click around until you find it.
• Permanent link (), available at the bottom of the page, takes you to the same page with a URL address you can share with others.

[edit] Book information

Book information is divided into fields, like "Title" and "Author". Many of the fields are editable, if you're looking at your own books. Double-click on a field to edit it. Many are also sortable. Click the blue header to sort by a particular column - click it again to reverse the sort.

[edit] Available fields

You can adjust your catalog display so that you view different informational fields. For a list of available fields, see here.

[edit] Tool area

Left-to-right and top-to-bottom the tool area include:

• Work - General information on the work.
• Detail - Information on your specific book or edition.
• Set collections - Editing the collection a book belongs in. Click once to add, again to remove. Books can belong to more than one collection.
• Edit book link, for editing the particular book in question.
• Delete book - Delete the book from your catalog. This removes the book from all collections.
• Member icon - How many other members have the work.
• Reviews icon - How many reviews have been written about the work. The icon will show blue if you have entered a review for the book, white if you have not.

[edit] List view

List view allows you to view your books in a list format, with up to twelve columns of information, plus links to the social information of the work. Double-clicking in almost every field will allow you to edit the information in-place. You can edit what columns appear by clicking on the edit link next to the display styles.

[edit] Cover view

Shows you the covers of your books. You can set the number of covers per page, the sort order, and the cover size on the navigation bar at the top. Click on the cover to bring up the links to information about that book.

MORE HERE ABOUT NAVIGATION, DISPLAY, AND LIGHTBOX IN COVER VIEW

[edit] Collections

Collections allow you to sort your books into large groups, or collections. Grouping books in collections makes them easier to search, and some default collections interact with the site in different ways. There are six default collections (Your Library, Wishlist, To read, Read but unowned, Currently reading, and Favorites), and users may create and name their own collections, as well as choose whether they want each collect to 'count' in recommendations and connections. Books can belong to more than one collection.

Member-created collections are used only in your library (as opposed to tags, which are specific to your library, but used as data site-wide). Default collections are occasionally used in site-wide data to reveal, for example, the most frequently wishlisted or favorited book.

[edit] Tags

Tags are a simple way to categorize books according to how you think of them, not how some official librarian does. Thus one person will tag the The DaVinci Code "novels" while another tags it "trashy, religion, mary," and still another only "summer home." Tags are particularly useful for sorting and searching by those concepts—i.e., when you need a list of all your young adult fiction or books about zombies.

Tags are used site-wide in aggregate, and you'll see the most common tags listed on works pages. You can take advantage of everyone's collective tags by searching tagmash - so you can check to see what young adult zombie fiction others have tagged that you might have missed out on!