What's the goal of LibraryThing?

Some of the comments Tim made in a recent thread made me realize that I don't really understand what this site is about. What do you use it for? What do you want to use it for? And where do you see it going in the future?

It's to provide me with a place to catalog my books, of course.

My reason for joining was to catalog all the books I had read. They were spread out over multiple rooms. After moving a number of times, I no longer put them in any logical order. As a result, I no longer knew what I owned, what I had lost or loaned. I bought a kindle, which I love, but it exacerbated the problem of not being able to put books by a single author or similar topic next to eachother.

Now, although I still love looking at all my books, I get the most enjoyment from finding new books to read. This aspect of LT has enriched my life
enormously. An occasional good conversation is also fun. I don't have a facebook account, so I guess this is the extent of my on-line social life. ;-)

I joined to catalog my books. I stay so I can turn all of Collectorator's bugs blue.

What, no poll?

you can catalogue books here?

Not any more. You could when I came here, but now you can only your-books them.

Robert

Back to the topic...

You'll have to ask Tim what the goal of LibraryThing is - after all, he created it.
In the mean time, I'll tell you what ~I~ use it for...

I was already using a spreadsheet to catalog my books, so cataloging them here was redundant. My spreadsheet, which I continue to maintain is still MUCH more useful to me than LibraryThing is - for my purposes. LibraryThing doesn't, for example, allow me to record the dimensions and weight of each book in a usable manner. It's woefully inadequate in obtaining categorizational (I may have just coined a word there!) information. Sure, it'll get the Dewey Number - a lot of the time; and it'll get the LoC Category Number - some of the time; but it doesn't get the LoC Catalog Number, or the BISAC designation, or a half-dozen other catalog schema. Come to think of it, I can search through my spreadsheet thousands of times faster than I can here on LT. I used the information on my spreadsheet to reorganize all of my books by their Dewey Number, and determine how much shelf space each section was going to require, so I knew exactly where each book was going to go before I physically moved a single one. LibraryThing is totally useless as far as that is concerned.

But, I can't read reviews on my spreadsheet; and for that matter, I can't write one there either. I can't compare editions, except on LibraryThing. My spreadsheet doesn't tell me whether other people are also reading books similar to mine, or give me recommendations for similar books. My spreadsheet doesn't have the capability of communicating with others who may or may not be reading books that I have.

My spreadsheet does lots of things better than LibraryThing does, but the things that LibraryThing does is priceless.

For me, this is the place to catalogue the books I own and have read.

I have no interest in data details (dewey numbers etc.) but it gives my pedantic nature enourmous satisfaction to know that they are there :D I love the connections to "real" libraries and the fact that the data comes from there.

I don't care for the Talk except for the site-related parts (bug collectors, RSI and such). I don't look for book recommendations here, they are of no interest to me, I like to find books on my own from other sort of sources.

I really, really, REALLY love the "everybody's an LT-librarian" -philosophy! I like to do my part Combining stuff, I like to maintain the "purity of data". I love the concept of 'work' which allows us to see MWYB etc. That's really all the social interaction I look for here, for me that's the very best part.

I just hope this site would, in essence, stay the same. Maybe faster, giving more stats, having some of the features finished (contains/contained in, for example). But essentially the same. Please.

I joined to catalogue the books I own.

Since joining I've expanded the cataloguing to cover the books I have read since joining, which has prevented my from buying duplicates. Also as an English student the ability to list the books I'm acquiring, but not yet reading, for my dissertation is invaluable and I may have just about convinced my tutor to join the site.

I love the statistics and comparisons and the Unsuggester and how when I was first cataloguing my library just adding ten or so books would completely change everything.

I do look at book recommendations and rummage around other people's libraries, with the result that my own tbr pile has expanded as a result.

Picking up on comments about 'hot reviews' from another part of Talk, I tend not to look at these as I do think this is a popularity contest rather than having any relevance to the quality or pertinence of the review - I only tend to read and thumb reviews for books I have read.

I also love how clean this site is in comparison to other book sites, no extraneous clutter on these pages.

Finally I like the fact that Tim and the LibraryThing staff are approachable and visible and clearly passionately invested in the site, rather than just fiscally invested!

OP - Please can you tell us what the confusion is and where it comes from? What did Tim say? For me, like pretty much everyone else, it's where I keep a list of my books and can easily find which ones I have still to read etc. Yes there are other things, like the chats, ER, and so on and I've made some good friends here but it was the cataloguing that brought me here and that, plus getting other people's views on books I'm thinking of reading, is what keeps me here (not that the friends aren't important too, but if LT stopped cataloguing I'd probably drop the site and stay in touch with them by email).

I joined LT to catalog my books.

Now it's about 95% social, mostly about books but also about other things. About once a month I add the books I've read. I buy very few now.

If LT ever dropped the catalog (never going to happen), I'd still come for the friends I've made.

^ It's interesting to notice how differently people use & feel this site :) For me it's the other way around: if LT dropped the catalog, I'd never come back. There are loads of other places to chat and be social, but not many places with high-quality book data + MWYB-kind of networks.

I do hope there will always be an equal place for all kinds of users :)

I came because the site was about books. I was already cataloging my books on my computer (still am).

I liked the idea of having my books available on-line, so I could look stuff up even when I wasn't at home. Also so I could waste time at work :). I did at one time have Excel lists on my Ipac, but the battery died and I have not been able to get it replaced.

Although I catalog my books, I am only interested in a limited amount of 'data'. I don't care about the illustrator's 3rd cousin. Really like the series information which I have too, but I can now check in the store and prevent myself from buying duplicates.

I started my own catalog (2001) to prevent me from buying duplicates, and to make sure I got all the books in a series, and in the right order.

I like the social stuff, the chance to find new books, discussing the nuts and bolts of the site, and how active and open Tim is in how the site is run and developed.

Here for the cataloguing of my books.

Most valuable thing to me is the series functionality, although that only provides about half of what I want, because the really important thing is the books in a series that I don't have. I had to set up a separate account because the wishlist functionality where I kept the hand-generated list 'messed up' the catalogue of stuff that I do have.

Another valuable thing is recommendations, but I get none of that from LT functionality, and all from what I see other Thingambrarians saying in discussions, so the group system and the chat are invaluable for that.

Another thing that I come here for is the combining/separating task. It feeds my CDO.

I came, I catalogued, I conquered ;-)

Seriously, I came for cataloguing. I found the social side when I got here. I love both of my children equally but Social Side can be a bit of a bully so I tend to defend Cataloguing Side like a lioness with cubs. I like to think they can co-exist and appreciate their differences as positives.

Also, like Noisy, LT taps into my CDO in a way that nothing else does.

I tried many different methods for cataloging my books. This is the only one that's ever worked. All the other stuff I do here is just noodling around when I should be doing something else.

What a great comment from WholeHouseLibrary:

My spreadsheet does lots of things better than LibraryThing does, but the things that LibraryThing does is priceless.

(My italics)

The range of intelligent and diverse comments above shows exactly why I love this site so much. I have not found anywhere else on the interwebbys that contains such an interesting and knowledgeable range of users, who are deeply committed to improving the site and are also kind and helpful to one another.

I stumbled upon the site through my husband's author page, but I came here to catalog our books, of which we had and still have many. My husband has since passed away, so now I'm cataloging for his legacy library. That is an amazing resource for me.

In the course of cataloging, I wandered into the talk groups, and that, my friends, is what well and truly hooked me. I find that book people (at least these OCD catalogin' book people) are the most interesting participants of any forum I have had the pleasure to frequent.

My late husband would have said that the purpose of LibraryThing is so I would stop nagging him about spending too much time on Daily Kos.

What 18 said.

v

I am a career bookseller. My whole life has been about connecting to people through their books and what they like to read. I joined LT to catalog my own books, but what I love about the site is where that data takes you. I keep an inventory on my computer as well, but it goes no where. On LT, it goes everywhere.

This is the thread I was talking about, where Tim discusses the social aspects of LT.

I use it mainly to catalog my books.

But there are other uses that sometimes interest me: Talk, recommendations, reviews, other members' catalogs.

I came to catalogue the books I own, and it was so easy (even in 2005 before Overcat) and fun to watch my numbers climb that I went on to catalogue all my family's books and then all the audio and video. That made me, for a brief period in early 2006, the 10th largest library on LibraryThing. Still a golden moment in my memory, although hundreds of people have now surpassed me :)

I would have stayed regardless, because the value to me of having every book I own listed is enormous. Exporting the list saves me money in reduced acquisition of duplicates. Contemplating my catalogue gives me pleasure (mine, preciousss!).

However, because I was an early member, I have been privileged to watch the site evolve around me. Groups, Local, CK, etc. all have come along and evolved/improved. It has been fascinating. The cataloguer in me likes upgrading records, combining, splitting authors, and adding to CK. I would not have thought I would enjoy the social side, but I do. I've learned a lot here from the other members - sometimes very odd, trivial things, but it's all good :) And of course the book recommendations I've collected have far outweighed the money I've saved in not purchasing duplicates.

And not to forget Early Reviewers. I did not come in at the beginning of that, but I've really enjoyed participating, even when the book I received turned out to be a dud.

Why does LT have to have a goal? Can't we just use if for the things we already us it for - and there is a nice variety in the preceding posts.

I joined LT because I have worked in libraries off & on since 1944 & after I retired, I missed them. I can't get around very well, but I can keep up with what is popular, new authors. old authors with new books, books on current events, biographies on new people - things I would't hear about otherwise. Sometimes I write book reviews & sometimes I have this strange compulsion to post a whole bunch of not very important stuff on "talk".

Why does LT have to have a goal?

When considering recommended improvements, it would be useful to see how they fit in with the overall direction that LT is trying to take.

For me, it's about cataloging my books and finding out about new and interesting books to read. Part of that finding out about new books is social in one way or the other, either algorithmically social (automatic recommendations, perusing similar libraries) or conventionally social (member recommendations, reading reviews). But for me the interactions facilitate the book-related aspects, rather than the books helping me to find interesting people. (That's part of why I'm so upset about people using LT for cataloging sports equipment or perfumes -- I see it as an abuse of the system.)

The goal of LibraryThing? Probably somewhere in there is the unsexy reality of generating enough revenue to make payroll.

I'm not sure if I'm a typical user or not. I use the catalog functions and parts of the social features but am not obsessive about them. I guess I would call myself a casual user. I'm glad the site was created. I use it. I hope it survives. I don't expend large amounts of energy wondering about the future of LT. I think it will evolve. Users will leave and new ones will arrive. The saga of LT continues.

13:

If LT ever dropped the catalog (never going to happen), I'd still come for the friends I've made.

I wouldn't. It wouldn't be LT anymore in my mind if that happened.

Well, I came here strictly to catalog my library. It's fairly large, and I had trouble remembering what I did and didn't have. But LibraryThing doesn't entirely meet my needs, so I have to keep a second catalog with a different program. It's annoying, but since neither program exactly matches my requirements, I have to maintain both.

I've been disappointed in the bibliographic content at LibraryThing. While there is a separate field for the publication date, several distinct items are all lumped into the single "Publication" field. Example for Density Functional Theory: A Practical Introduction: Wiley-Interscience (2009), Hardcover, 252 pages. Each of those should be in a separate field. And there is nowhere to enter the publication location.

What LibraryThing does really well is tie my library to other libraries and people. It helps me to find new and interesting books. That's why I stay.

I'm just here for the medals. :)

I came for the recommendations.

I started using weRead on Facebook and found that it was not robust or smart enough for my tastes, and I wanted a place where I could track my reading, write reviews, and more importantly, find new books to read.

I use LT to catalog the books I own, but its primary function for me is to be a reading log and to help me discover and explore new books to read - through Talk, through reviews and ratings, through automatic recommendations.

Its most important feature to me is the ability to keep an easy and accessible wishlist of books I want to read. Also very important to me are the works pages, where data is smooshed together to help me make both personal and professional decisions (I buy books for our academic library's popular reading collection) about what would be an enjoyable read. I value the way LT brings together editions, covers, ratings, reviews, and recommendations, and I think its ability to do this really stands out as fairly unique.

I am probably unusual in that the specific cataloging tools are one of the least important aspects to me.

I joined in 2005 to catalog my books. I remember how excited I was to "see" my collection in a tag cloud. Then I found I could look at the libraries of others who shared my books, and the fun really began! I love that LT gathers a whole bunch of personal decisions (to list a book, to tag it, to hold it with others, to review it) and aggregates that information in a way that helps me to find other interesting books and ideas.

Importantly, the information comes not just from experts or elites or "the unwashed masses" but the full spectrum of readers, and I hope that LT can maintain the balance that currently welcomes such a wide spectrum of people and opinions here. Here's where I admit to the socially unacceptable: I like having access to the varied opinions here and still having complete freedom to choose my desired level of social interaction...I can hear what people have to say without maintaining the usual social norms. Sometimes people with exposure to a wide variety of ideas and really interesting opinions are simply tedious to interact with on any consistent basis. I'd bet more than a few feel the same way about me, too! I can stand by and listen to any forum, or enter briefly and then leave, and no-one's feelings are hurt by some expectation of relationship. I don't frequent Pro and Con or the game threads, but I do visit even those occasionally. LT has a culture that tolerates and even welcomes a wide spectrum of people and interaction styles. I like that the literary elitists and the Twihards can each have their own place and sometimes come together, too. I love the loose ties that form the LT culture; we can all get a smile from "two weeks," get passionate or mock passion about checkmarks or data fields, joke based on knowledge of long-term member personalities, and most of the time bring people together in conversation who might never tolerate each other's company otherwise. LT is both one culture and multi-cultural in a way that I've not seen anywhere else.

I do feel a sense of community in the unique space LT provides. Ironically, most of my Talk here is not about books at all, but about preserving and enhancing this space I find so valuable, a space where living ideas flourish. There's a world more that could be done with features like Tag Mirror, tag mashes, and connections with CK data. Touchstones showed great premise, but usage has been limited by inconsistent performance. Discussion threads for individual books, pages with reviews for books tagged a certain way, and other new features could continue this trend. I hope to see LT develop more ways to link ideas while keeping true to a culture that facilitates but does not compel social interaction.

I’m here to catalogue my books. I love entering my books, picking the right covers, using tags and collections; etc, etc. I also love reviewing books. I do not use the recommendations feature.

I do enjoy talking to other readers about books. The social aspect of LT is an added bonus but I wouldn’t be here if that became the focal point of this site. For me LT should be about cataloguing books. If I wanted to chat there are plenty of other places I could go to.

Ditto 18.

I use LT to catalog my books. I like seeing alternative covers for books I own. Sometimes I look at other libraries similar to mine to see what I might like to get. I visit some groups that interest me but rarely participate in the discussions. Never use recommendations; not here, not Amazon's, not anyone's.

If the catalog functions of LT were to disappear, so would I.

> 30

I agree. I'd be off looking for another place to catalog my books. That's why I came here in the first place! All else is commentary.

>23 _Zoe_:: For the record, I voted undecided. I am not someone who needs all this data acquisition (I do enough of that in my real life). I like knowing % male/female, dead or alive, who has collections of books similar to mine, all the simple stuff. Beyond that, it is beyond me.

k4k

My first thought was that I came for the cataloging, and stayed for the social interactions. On second thought, that's not quite true. I came for the cataloging, and stayed for the social interactions and the cataloging. They're of equal importance to me now. If, for some bizarre reason, LT stopped allowing me to maintain a catalog, I'd probably leave, but keep in touch with the friends I have made here. On the flip side, if LT got rid of Talk and all social interactions, I would probably visit the site once or twice a month to update my catalog, at least at first, and then would start forgetting to do so, and eventually would not come back at all. Good thing neither scenario is likely.

I tried several "bookish" sites at once. After about a year I chose this one to be my one and only because it was much easier to add my books manually (lots of mine are not in a lot of databases). I wanted to review my books as I read them, and I preferred the way reviews work here as well. I liked the way the catalog worked and the simplicity and clean look of it all.

Then I discovered the social aspect of LT. I have met some wonderful folks here who really like to talk about books, but have a lot of other great stuff to say as well. I need both. I love both.

I'm not a stickler for details, though that is something I could really get into if there were less demands on my time off-line and such.

I came for the cataloguing, and the specific type of cataloguing (I want edition data, not just that I own a copy of a title, and I want manual entry for things not in Amazon).

I like the social side, and would miss it, but it's not my primary reason for being here, and I'd stay even if the social side went away. However, things that improve the social side are just fine with me, even if they're features I don't personally use.

I write my reviews for me first, so that I have a record of what I thought about a book (particularly now that my brain is getting full and I can't remember the details of everything I've read), for my friends second, so that we can discuss books, and for strangers third, because I appreciate thoughtful reviews that help me decide if a book is to my taste, and wish to reciprocate. LibraryThing is the best tool I've found so far for the first of these. My own blog is what I use for the second. Since I am no longer on speaking terms with Amazon, LibraryThing is now my primary venue for the third.

I also came for the cataloging. I'm not very particular about the data, so long as it's the right book. These days, I'm also here for the common knowledge data and to find new books.

Common knowledge data, spotty as it is, is a life saver at work. I work at a comic store, and it's really difficult to tell what order some of the graphic novels go in. (Crossovers and unnumbered series! Ugh!) More often than not, somebody has filled in the series data here. I also use the characters and place CK fields if I'm trying to find someone a book they don't know the title of, but that's more hit or miss. (I also spend a lot of time adding to this data, because I'm obsessive that way.)

I also use LT to find new books to buy. Tagmash is great, and I love member recommendations. I tend not to use LT's book suggesters.

Caveats: First, in joining this discussion I do not want to imply that my answer is the right answer. However, it is how I see the site, and therefore how I see my role in developing its features. That is not to say that the site is its features. In fact, I think the opposite--social software is part "software" and part the society that uses it. Nor is it to say that my answer won't change. Lastly, I wrote this quickly, to get to bug-fixing...

My answer: LibraryThing is a social cataloging and social networking site.

It can be used in a variety of ways. Some people use it exclusively to catalog their books, and don't even care--or aren't even conscious--of how personal cataloging draws value from the fact that everyone is "cataloging together." Some are drawn to the site exclusively to socialize with interesting, smart people. Most, however, fall somewhere in the middle, and most who stick around for any length of time find their usage of the site "moving around."

There are many ways of "moving around." One common pattern, and one that also describes how LibraryThing developed, is what I call the "ladder of social cataloging." The ladder of social cataloging starts out with purely personal cataloging. Next up comes non-altruistic social cataloging, where users benefit from data entered for personal reasons. Tags are an example of this; people tag almost exclusively for themselves, but the result is interesting and even "helpful" (smile) to the community. Automatic recommendations are another example. The same logic even applies to merely cataloging your books; even a total misanthrope can be valuable to others, so long as their catalog can be browsed by others.

Moving up the ladder, Common Knowledge and cover and author uploads often get used first for personal reasons--to fill in personal holes--but take off as members discover they are contributing to a large and valuable community effort. As members are exposed to more of the site, and as helping becomes an obsession, they become more and more interested in making it better for others, not just themselves. Combining often takes this trajectory. Eventually some members move to caring for the community directly, adding data to authors they hate, or venues they will never visit. At the very top are activities like Legacy Libraries or flash-mob cataloging.

Socially, I suspect the pattern of changing use is more complicated, as it depends more on how others react to them, and to the inherently more complicated and flexible "software" of real communication. I've noticed some users jump into multiple groups right away. Others tip-toe in, starting with a narrow subject interest. Some avoid groups, but keep in touch on comments.

Goals. On the cataloging side, my goal is to provide an excellent tool for the collector and book obsessive to make quality lists of books. Much of the interest for me, however, lies in figuring out how these essentially non-social activity can "add up" to something more. I want everyone to gain something from the rich community cataloging their books together. And I want to offer them a "ladder" to richer interaction with both books and people.

On the social site, I want LibraryThing to be a place where book lovers can connect with like-minded people, around and through the books they love. In general, I think LibraryThing works best when the social and the bibliographic go together. I have, I think, tended to neglect socializing with people you already know from another context--the driver of Facebook socializing. I want to give that more play, without neglecting the central concept of relating through books.

When it comes to connecting through books, I want to provide a wide range of conversations. I am of the opinion that LibraryThing's best contributions lies in creating social connections around readers with no viable way to connect before, not just providing an online place for people to have conversations about the very few books one can expect to have offline conversations about. That is, while connecting around Twilight is important and must be supported, our greatest value lies in facilitating connections--social and semi-social (ie., recommendations)--around books and topics farther down the tail. That was never possible before, except in certain special circumstances (eg., university, a book club), and it is potentially transformative.

Social or not, I also want LibraryThing's cataloging and social networking to reach outward, and embrace the larger book world, virtual and real. As a data geek, and someone who appreciates many kinds of book-loving, the potential discoveries and connections are just too great. To this end I see us as a bridge between librarians and booksellers, readers and authors, etc. This is why we have LibraryThing Authors, LibraryThing Local, LibraryThing for Publishers, LibraryThing for Libraries, etc.

Guiding principles. Lastly, my aspirations for the site are intricately bound up in my idealism about how sites, especially social sites, should be built, managed and run. That is, I have certain values and ideals I want LibraryThing to reflect. Without spending too much time tightening this up, the list includes things like:

* Intellectual freedom, without censorship.
* A minimal standard of expression, based upon the distinction between attacking ideas and attacking people.
* Respect for members as customers. While it's hurt our growth, I like that heavy users must pay for a membership. First, it's given us a steady stream of "real" income, which has allowed us to become a "real" business, not a VC-funded falling stone. More importantly, it creates customers with rights, not "users" without them. As has been said, you aren't Facebook's customer, you are the product they sell to their real customers. I hate that approach. I also hate polluting the site with advertisements.
* Respect for libraries and library data, and for all quality data. I stand squarely on the side of quality data, open data and open solutions.
* Respect for all parts of the book world, not just the ones that have affiliate programs we can make money off. This is why we have worked so hard to hook up with physical bookstores, especially indies.
* I have sought to avoid the manipulative, dishonest practices now ubiquitous in social networking sites. So, for example, I don't want LibraryThing sending welcome emails to your gynecologist or ex-girlfriend just because they're in your address book.
* In many ways, we have a starry-eyed 2005-era view of the online world, not the world that now exists, dominated by a few closed platforms that behave terribly.
* I favor transparency of management. I want LT run by people who "are themselves," with transparency and genuine respect for "users," and without fakeness or duplicity.
* I want LT run by people who share a love for books, and share community values. (This is why almost all LT hires have been book lovers, many have been members, and none have been fake.)
* A desire to push the bounds, experimenting with new ideas in the book world. In a very real way we invented social cataloging, and the site has contributed significantly to the fields of classification theory and social software. Put simply, LibraryThing innovations are in a lot of books now, and I get invited to a lot of conferences. (I'm off to spend a day talking about classification theory next week.) I also think users have benefitted a lot, as well as the users of competing products, since all good ideas are quickly taken up by others. I want to continue pushing the envelope there.
* I want to grow the site, not "flip it." LibraryThing could have been funded by venture capitalists very handsomely, but it would have meant a loss of control and a 2-5-year ticking clock to sell the company. When you take VC money the point is to spend it and spend it fast--to "die quickly" or sell for a high value. Instead, I took less money, but positioned the company to stay in the game for a long time. Since LT was founded, I have seen VC-funded social site after social site flame out or sell to a big company and lose its way. I want to build a real company, and I have. LibraryThing makes real money and spends real money; we aren't a falling stone. I want LibraryThing to be there for and stay true to the people who trust us with their data and love the community.

Lastly, I value long, rambling Talk posts. :)

That's a lot of rambling to avoid mentioning your ulterior motive, Tim.

Admit it, your goal is world domination.

I have always sought to the manipulative, dishonest practices now ubiquitous in social networking sites.

I think you are missing a verb here.

The very is "be." It can be omitted in certain grammatical contexts.

you have always sought to 'be' the manipulative ....

?

It's a joke. :) I edited it to add "avoid."

Well, I am glad of that (that you are avoiding rather than being manipulative).

If its a joke you need a marker like in 50. Otherwise it seems like Fractured Fairy Tales' :)

I would like to apologize to all for the length of my post, and the speed with which I wrote it. I have cost you bandwidth and brain cells. :)

52> Sounded good to me, however rushed it might have been. I think it's pretty rare for a site to have "a" goal in any case. Sites grow and change and different aspects wind up mutating.

And from a personal standpoint, I've found your way of dealing with LT's long term longevity to be very inspiring. Like most programmers, I have this secret desire that someday I'll create something cool and be able to be my own boss. There aren't a lot of examples out there of how to do this without killing the thing you love. I think Craigslist is one good example. And I think LT is the other one that springs to mind. It's nice to have concrete examples that you can attain success in this realm and not also have to sell out.

>45 timspalding: Great post, and I think it will be useful in directing future RSI discussions. It's important to know what exactly you're trying to do here.

The very is "be." It can be omitted in certain grammatical contexts.

This is brilliant.

I would have preferred -

The very is "be." It can omitted in certain grammatical contexts.

You omit other in sentence, some contexts. Such here. But all time.

55, 56>

Trhee hvae been interesting itrneesnitg suedits sohniwg taht you can raed msot txet eevn if all the mldide ltretes are sblacrmed, as lnog as the frist and lsat leettrs are rhigt.

"Msot", indeed. You put the word interesting next to itrneesnitg and I still didn't recognise it. And I actually knew that sentence. I suppose that shows as well as anything why I need LibraryThing to keep track of certain things.

Coincidentally, I am at this very moment reading a highly interesting text containing many words with switched letters. It bothers me a lot less than unclarity of meaning or bad grammar.

I have a lot of books. Back in the '90s, it had already reached a point where I could no longer recall with certainty just what I owned, and I started coming home from bookstores with too many dupes.

So I built a spreadsheet in AppleWorks that I could use to keep track of what I owned; printing it out (this was in the dark days before portable internet access - before affordable laptops, really) allowed me to keep a copy in the car so that I could run out and check to see if I owned a particular book.

Then I had the misfortune to buy a G3 iBook. Which failed catastrophically three times in three months. I lost data.

So, once I realized that LT could give me a reliable, redundant, off-site home for a book catalog, I joined up.

Since then, I've become a fan of the social aspects: I've made real-life friends on the site. (AND, as a free bonus, I get to be insulted by random trolls.)

Generally a better class of more literate trolls though!

>59 AsYouKnow_Bob: & 60 I guess if you want to be insulted in conversational Latin, this is the place to be!

I should also say that I am finding the reviews more and more valuable -- both my own (Ok, seriously - so that I don't forget the immediacy of how I felt about a book) and reviews by other people. It is so interesting that someone else can read the same book that I do and have an entirely different perspective on it. I value that aspect greatly.

However, to get back to the anonymous vs. listed thumbs thing (is it this thread? I forget...): I don't like the idea of my name being attached to a thumb and would opt out. I would feel obligated to EXPLAIN the thumb, which adds a level of effort to it that I am not interested in. If I want people to know who I am, I'll tell them myself.

k4k

Tim, that's a great goal you have there :) Would it be a good idea maybe to put that text somewhere on "About LibraryThing" as a goal/vision/mission statement of the site?

45 >

Tim, you're a smart guy. I like that. I like your site, too, but you knew that already.

---digression---

and none have been fake

Fake employee. I'm fascinated--how would you describe a fake employee? Having been raised in Chicago, I understand putting your relatives on the payroll whether they do any work or not. We called that "patronage," among other things. Let's make Liam Assistant to the CEO's Assistant.

Or is a fake employee a mythical person like Betty Crocker? There really isn't an Abby or a Sonia, just a dozen interns who come and go posting under those names. Or not.

:::musing::: I wouldn't mind being a fake employee, as long as it was a) legal, and b) included a non-fake paycheck. Sounds like my dream job, in fact.

---/digression---

Back to work. (Non-paying.)

edited 'cause it ate my fake HTML (2x)

> 63

Having been raised in Chicago, I understand putting your relatives on the payroll whether they do any work or not. We called that "patronage," among other things.

No, no, no. Putting your relatives on the payroll is called "putting your arms around your sons".

Having people on the payroll (relatives or not) who don't do any work is called "ghost payrolling".

63>

"... among other things ...

I haven't lived in Chicago for 20 years. One forgets things.

>45 timspalding:

I enjoyed reading that, Tim. Thanks.

And I second Talvitar's idea that it should be permanently lodged somewhere on the site.

>45 timspalding: am of the opinion that LibraryThing's best contributions lies in creating social connections around readers with no viable way to connect before, not just providing an online place for people to have conversations about the very few books one can expect to have offline conversations about. That is, while connecting around Twilight is important and must be supported, our greatest value lies in facilitating connections--social and semi-social (ie., recommendations)--around books and topics farther down the tail. That was never possible before, except in certain special circumstances (eg., university, a book club), and it is potentially transformative.

I am so there. But may I inquire about this little item's fate? I think it would enhance the site for all the reasons you stated above.

Just sayin'. And BTW, this site has many features and nooks and crannies that I don't explore or exploit, but I love knowing they're there. Thank you again for creating this delightful space for the bookish to congregate. Now, as we get to retirement age (those not already there), perhaps we can take it corporeal.

Tim's post is all the reasons why I love this site. I came for the cataloguing -- but the cataloguing is enhanced because we're pooling our work. I have 464 contributions to Common Knowledge, or so my profile page tells me. I spent the time entering that data partly for me, but partly because I know it will be useful to others, because the work done by others has been useful to me.

And yes, it does make a difference that we are the customers, rather than the product that's being sold.

I remember - but can't find - Tim speaking about the Lovecraftian vain of LibraryThing. So I guess the ultimate goal is to turn us all into minions of Cthulhu, and to bring about the return of the "old ones".

"Pardon me boys, is that the lair of great Cthulhu ..."

goal of librarything to make members overjoyed with anything literary proof that we are not kooky, we really do want to read and can remember our beloved books and find new ones .

Back to the first style of post here -

I had been _attempting_ to catalog my books for years - paper, spreadsheets, databases, etc etc. I never managed to get all of them into a catalog before I bought some new ones, got rid of some old ones, and had to go back and review what I had to make it match the catalog again.

Then I discovered LT. Between the insta-data (yes, I mostly used Amazon at the beginning) and the speed of entering via CueCat, I actually got all my books into the catalog before I messed up the real world; and when I got books and got rid of them, I was able to change my LT catalog quickly to reflect that change. Yay! LT is wonderful. I can keep from buying duplicates.

Then I discovered Talk. Not only could I keep track of my books, I could find interesting, intelligent people to talk to about books and the rest of the world. I tried out a Challenge thread, and that got me hooked on a) recording my reads and b) reviewing books. Then I discovered that if I hated a book and reviewed it and said so, it would keep me from buying it again after I'd gotten rid of it, so I started tagging some of my books as discards rather than deleting them. Then Collections came and made that much easier.

Somewhere in there I started doing combining and CK (especially Series, because it's extremely useful to me). I'm more or less going up Tim's ladder.

I came to LT as a cataloging site, and that's its primary purpose for me. It's also my primary social site (I also Twitter, but then I got onto that because it would be helpful for LT (before the change in Twitter code made entering books via tweet impossible)). Not quite equal value - I could survive without a social site at all, while if I didn't have LT I'd be looking for something else to catalog my books in. But both sides are very important to me.

I came to catalog my books; like jjmcgaffey, I had done it with databases and spreadsheets for years, and still maintain my EndNote database, but the ease of doing it in LT rapidly became addictive. As it has worked out, LT and EndNote tend to complement each other; I record somewhat different info in each, and each one provides data for the other.

I joined before the social side existed, and would never have thought it would have become such an important part of my life. I am on FaceBook, but if I could only be on one, LT or FB, I would ditch FB in a heartbeat.

I love LT more then any other book-related website I've been on. It's not just a cataloguing site and not just a social site, it's a part of my life and my routine.

*ahem* Enough with the sappy crap. LibraryThing is, to me, a cataloguing site (to state it in a very simplified way). I do participate in Talk, but 99% of that is LT-related (RSI, etc). As many friends as I've made here, I do consider my use of this website to be primarily about books.

I definitely understand the need to balance social features and cataloguing features, but I very much hope there will never come a day when cataloguing features are overshadowed by the social ones.