Movies, Music, Video Games?

Since 2006, I have been under the impression that LT is about all things bookish. It stands head and shoulders above the other book sites out there.

At least one member, however, doesn't think so:

http://www.librarything.com/profile/RSHabroptilus

This fellow has 2,943 items in his "library" that are not books: he has manually entered his movies, music albums, and video games.

To me, this is an abuse of LT's mission and purpose, not to mention a waste of precious bandwidth.

Well you are more than welcome to hold that opinion, however while Tim does not encourage other media he doesn't penalize people for adding them. I myself have 1100 comics and almost 350 DVDs cataloged and I find nothing wrong with that. I am not putting my music here and I think games are pushing things a little but it's no skin off my nose. Still someone supposedly has perfume cataloged and someone else antique clothing. So this is nothing new and it in general it doesn't hurt others experience (the majority of the time) so it is politely ignored.

I've seen the perfumes and the dresses and they are out there, but to be fair, I've only seen them after links have been posted to previous threads so I guess they don't really intrude into my user experience. Politely ignoring works for me. I can't say I'm rocked by the presence of DVDs either but, although the TOS refers to 'books', my local library has a DVD and CD collection so it's within the bounds of the library side as far as I'm concerned. Again, they don't really impact my user experience that much and since collections have come in and people often have a DVD Collection, I don't even have to avoid the DVD-heavy libraries when browsing (something I used to do). So, pretty much what readafew said.

1> Yeah, it's annoying and I wish LT was strictly for books (my recommendations are riddled with movies), but LT staff has even semi-encouraged it in a post or two by instructing people on how to do it. So, given that, whaddya gonna do?

Rip off LT and make my own knockoff, that's what! MUHAHAHAHA!

...okay, probably not.

The only place I notice it is in combining: since these items generally don't have an ISBN, it can be a bit of a nuisance if the owner hasn't in some way marked that these are DVDs or CDs.

#1 Cut the guy some slack - he seems to have 2500 books in his library as well and has written some decent reviews. I think he qualifies as a 'proper' reader and book collector. My only quibble would be that he hasn't put (DVD) or whatever in the title to distinguish the film from a book of the same name.

DOI - I have coffee cups in my library ;-)
http://www.librarything.com/work/7153533/book/39913562

6> ooohhhh! that is SWEET! And features one of my favourite books, too. Love Albert Campion stories.

I put music and movies in my catalogue because it is my library and IMO proper libraries include music and movies. I like keeping track of everything in one place. I'm very careful to add sound recording or videorecording in brackets after the title, though. Also, I haven't looked lately, but last time I checked, my music and movies added up to maybe 500 items out of my entire catalogue which is just short of 4400 at the moment.

I applaud RSHabroptilus' multimedia library. I think it kicks gluteus max. I encouraged him recently to input his non-book material. He used to question me why I did it. But I overcame his questionning, and finally convinced him to do it. I applaud all who do input music, movies, and video games. I hope more will. I also laud those who won't. Because I love all libraries, whether they consist solely of books, or books and other materials you'll find in most libraries.

I sure hope and pray that the movie and music-bigots out there will not win the day here in LT, but that tolerance and acceptance of all kinds of libraries, whether they're of one media, or mixed (books, music, movies) will ultimately prevail.

It's not bigotry or hatred - it's annoyance when all these non-literary titles show up in recommendations.

I sure hope and pray that the movie and music-bigots

It's not serious...it's sarcasm.

Some people's annoyance is so....annoying!

When someone catalogs something isn't there a field that one can check that prevents them from being considered in recommendations? Does this only work for the library owner and not in general?

With a tweak here and there I expect LT could be made to catalog all sorts of things without each type interfering with the others.

I don't think the solution is to ban everything but books, but make allowances for other things as well.

However, If someone wants to eliminate all books about vampires, except Bram Stoker's, well now, there might be something to that.

Actually, for people who use the social networking stats to find good reads, I can see non-books as a problem, but as I said, maybe LT could do something about it.

After all, the product is LibraryThing. One finds more than books in libraries.

I'll admit that I never look at the recommendations, so I have been unaware of this problem. As to that particular member, we have crossed paths many times, always positively, in book-focused discussions. I had no idea about the content of his library. It seems to me this situation might be fixed via a redo of the recommendations feature.

Personally, I think there are much larger problems with the "recommmendations"--like that it just goes by what you have in your library (apparently) and how many people who have X also have Y, and so in my case, I have a large number of comics (graphic novels or trade paperbacks--book-form collections, in other words, and not individual issues), but they are very much a minority of my whole library--but nevertheless the first billion pages of my recs are for every comic book under the sun, even the ones that are laughable bullshit and are only showing up as a result of stuff in my library that my rating and review make clear I also think is laughable bullshit. In short: I never use the recommendations.

What I DO do is add scholarly articles, because I am a grad student and it is a convenient way to keep track of them and add some notes for future use, and it's cleaner to add them manually than add Journal of Phonetics 19(3) or whatever and explain in the review that I didn't read all of it. I always tag them as articles and usually source them, but anyone with the internet can do that themselves. I also add essays, and have gotten a reasonable number of thumbs up--say, Nietzsche's European Nihilism appears nowhere in a book on its own, but certainly deserves review and recognition, even for those of us who don't read all of the Nietzsche Reader. (It occurs to me that all of this makes no sense unless I tell you that my librarything is a record of what I read, not of books I own). finally, I add webcomics and things, because they deserve review even when they don't exist in printed form. Like, have you heard about the Kindle? "The book" is becoming an increasingly problematized thing.

Finally, RSHab is a standup dude with many great reviews of fine literary works and a long record of LT community engagement, and I find myself wondering why some people have nothing better to do than make their annoyance known all the time. Take a walk in the park!

11> After all, the product is LibraryThing. One finds more than books in libraries.

I think you're being far too literal here. Log out of LT and look at the home page. Take the tour. It makes it pretty clear what the purpose of the site is.

I am the one who started this thread and I have read it with interest. Just a few thoughts:

1. I was not "picking" on RSHabroptilus, but rather using his unorthodox library as an example.

2. I have absolutely no problem with comics or any other printed media being included in a member's library. No one appointed me content manager.

3. I also have a library of Kindle e-books, which have an ASIN instead of an ISBN. I've uploaded photos that clearly show they are Kindle versions (as opposed to the printed versions).

4. I still disagree with the inclusion of music, movies, video games, antique dresses, perfumes, etc. on what I believe is a book site. LT is not a traditional library, nor is it eBay East. The "book" count at the bottom of the page says 51,014,353 right now; this is an obvious fallacy.

Here's three more exquisite, so-called "unorthodox libraries" put together by brilliant LT members whose contributions to LT are indispensable and whose music insertions on the site far outweighs whatever benign "annoyance" they may (or may not) cause some members:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/benwaugh/musiclibrary - the best collection of early rock'n'roll records and rarities. This collection is an asset to LT, not a detriment. It's an education, really.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Makifat/music - another excellent collection, including insightful reviews of the music. Again, an asset to LT.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/LolaWalser&tag=classical+music&colle... - arguably the best collection of classical music on LT - definitely another asset, just like Todd's (RSHabroptilus') library is an asset and not a detriment to LT.

My music library pales in comparison to theirs.

Change "book count" to "work count" and there's no fallacy.

When I first started seeing movies (music and especially video games are largely untouched) popping up in the recommendations--a tool I never use, just occasionally glanced at--I was disgusted, annoyed, &c., and when I noticed my buddy Enrique joining in I screamed blasphemy. LT IS FOR BOOKS ONLY, SIR.

But thinking about it over time, I got slowly worn down, and tried adding a couple CDs in because there are no good places to catalogue music, and I was interested in writing reviews of tunes, too. Well, once I caved in I found it absolutely addictive to sit there, wasting away my free hours, or my recent hours watching movies with the family, just cataloguing all the entertainment I've experienced--which, to be honest, can be a tad embarrassing. I mean, look at how many movies I've seen! look at how many awful movies I've seen! Look at how many games I've played! Boy, if I could get those hours back I'd...I'd...hmph...

Hey, I'll defend the inclusion of vidya gamez. They should not just be shrugged off as an infantile diversion for The Kids. Deus Ex, for example, has one of the most brilliantly written (not to mention intellectually stimulating) stories and worlds of any story-telling medium--ever. Or Braid, a postmodern look at what the video game is, eventually becoming a dreamy thick-as-the-dickens metaphor for the Manhattan Project in the guise of a save-the-princess story. Or the Path, which hardly even qualifies as a game as you (barely) control six sisters or six pieces of a single woman in a strange retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood tale, looking through their memories and eventual confrontations with their own "wolves" on the way to their grandmother's house that can be interpreted in so many number of ways, deconstructing it could keep you busy for a long, long time.

Sorry about that...this "Are Video Games Art?" debate has just recently cropped up again because of Roger Ebert and the dismissive 'tude bugs me.

LT is obviously evolving past its intended purpose. That's all. No need to be stuck up.

My beef really isn't with the users who are cataloging these things (well, maybe the perfumes...). As long as the LT staff isn't disallowing it, it would be silly for me to try to hold it against the users. What I'd like to see is either the staff to say anything outside of books is a violation of the TOS, or to add in support for separating music and movies from the pool of books. I'd definitely prefer the latter, as there's obviously a need and people will probably just do it anyway. I'd settle for a simple radio button that had choices for "music" or "video." Just something that would allow for a sane separation so you don't have (mainly) books and videos of the same title muddling things up.

>9 MerryMary: It's annoyance when all these non-literary titles show up in recommendations.

> 15 I still disagree with the inclusion of music, movies, video games, antique dresses, perfumes

> 4 It's annoying and I wish LT was strictly for books (my recommendations are riddled with movies)

Well, you might all simply have to get over your little selves, then, won't you?

What really annoys me is when other people try to curtail the simple and harmless pleasures of others. I hate this kind of policeman mentality, and there has been far too much of it lately on LT. It's quite disgusting frankly. There's enough of that crap going on in the real world without having to put up with it on LT.

But I live with it, and have not sought to have those activities or that kind of attitude banned or curtailed. I suggest you do the same with the things you don't like about what other people do. It's called maturity among other things.

Now, I'm off to catalogue all my DVDs' CDs and my enormous collection of tortoiseshell Japanese antique dildos, just to muck up the recommendations. For fun.

You wouldn't be selling any of your "enormous... dildos" on e-bay, would you?

Oh, and read the teas leaves. Given that LT just rolled out a user scoring system to identify and eliminate spam works, do you really think that a similarly designed "not a book" system is far behind?

20> Eloquently put.

I never fail to be surprised when people post about how annoying it is that people post about things that annoy them..

>20 StormRaven:

If I were as small minded and as petty as some of the views expressed in 9, 15, and 4, I would remind you that ad hominem attacks are against LT TOS, and calling someone a 'dick' is a pretty blatant ad hominem attack, just in case that needs clarifying.

But I'm not, so I won't.

Hey guys, there are 1,108,292 members in LT at time of posting. Is it so surprising that some of us differ in opinion?

One of my most-loved aspects of LT is its general live-and-let-live attitude. Vitriolic threads like this give the lie to my theory that educated book-reading people tend to respect the opinions of others. Hows about everyone here goes away and reads Middlemarch? It's a great perspective-fixer.

As to this issue we're 'discussing', my opinion, for what it may be worth, is that the solution was brought about many posts ago - a simple fix can be done to the recommendations issue at back end, and otherwise, what's the problem? Part of Web 2.0's vision is to use social media in the way it best fits for each user as individuals, and freedom is a rather nice thing to have.

Good heavens. I rise to defend someone against a charge of bigotry (which I realize now was meant as sarcasm - didn't realize it at the time), and I'm accused of being small minded, petty, disgusting and immature. Whew. I had no idea.

I'm annoyed sometimes when something shows up in recommendations that isn't what it's supposed to be. Annoyed. Not angry, not ballistic, not homicidal, not dictatorial, not disgusted. Annoyed. A pretty mild sentiment that in no way interferes with other's pleasures and/or propensities for inclusion. Include away. I hope you mark things clearly so that confusion is kept to a minimum.

Where did I (or anyone else for that matter) say anything deserving of such an angry and abusive response?

If I go back to Middlemarch will LibraryThing recommend a perfume for me? If I input perfumes I like will it recommend books for me to read?

Prolly not.

In total books and other races in the library world, I don't think there's any winning by a nose. Chanel no. 5 will not get the count off so much that the data will not be useful.

I think for information's sake a DVD should be identified as a DVD, and a frock should be identified as a frock, but their cataloging will not hurt me, and I'm pretty fragile.

Robert

24: I didn't call him a dick. I said he had decided that being a dick was more important than the concerns of other LTers. Perhaps I should have said that he had decided that being allowed to be a dick was more important. It would have made my point clearer.

#18 I'd settle for a simple radio button that had choices for "music" or "video."

I think that's a great idea, though perhaps a few more choices would be good.

For anyone who thinks this is not making any difference, have a look at one of the composers' pages like Verdi:
http://www.librarything.com/author/verdigiuseppe&all=1
or Wagner:
http://www.librarything.com/author/wagnerrichard&norefer=1

I came across this when sorting out a series of opera guides - at the moment, an opera like La Traviata, in editions
http://www.librarything.com/work/102937/editions
has DVDs, CDs (full recording), CDS( highlights), libretto, full score, piano and vocal score. The problem in trying to separate them is the sheer number of copies that are just La Traviata / Giuseppe Verdi or La traviata : an opera in three acts / Giuseppe Verdi or La Traviata: Opera in Four Acts / Giuseppe Verdi. Trying to sort them out looks like an exercise in frustration, and I decided to leave the whole mess alone.

I think radio buttons are a bad idea. While I'm not going to hunt down people cataloguing things that are not books, I don't see any reason to actively encourage it either and providing radio buttons would. The TOS state that "LibraryThing is for YOUR books—books you own, have read or want". Emphasis is books. I make no apologies for having that opinion either.

>20 StormRaven: if you were referring to me, 's not quite what I said. It was meant to be an invitation to perspective that may have come out wrong, but I never said it annoys me--baffles, perhaps. Anyway, no offense meant.

>26 MerryMary: As above, didn't intend to contribute to any angry abuse.

I find it funny because after putting in my DVD's I've gotten some great DVD recommendations.

24> If I were as small minded and as petty as some of the views expressed in 9, 15, and 4

#4:1> Yeah, it's annoying and I wish LT was strictly for books (my recommendations are riddled with movies), but LT staff has even semi-encouraged it in a post or two by instructing people on how to do it. So, given that, whaddya gonna do?

Rip off LT and make my own knockoff, that's what! MUHAHAHAHA!

...okay, probably not.

Say what? I'm petty for taking a "I may not like it, but live and let live" attitude? And then making a joke to keep the mood light?

That's one messed up way of looking at it, tomcat.

ETA: Especially for someone who's ranting about being tired of other people airing their opinions about how the site should work.

> 7

IMO proper libraries include music and movies. I like keeping track of everything in one place.

I agree. However, LT isn't designed for cataloguing films or music. Frankly, I haven't found a site that is and that is as easy to use as LT (and I've tried more than one). I'd love a MusicThing or FilmThing!

On the few cds I've input I indicate "composer" rather than "author" and upload a cover of a cd.

> 35

On the few cds I've input I indicate "composer" rather than "author" and upload a cover of a cd.*

"Composer" isn't sufficient, though. I need "composer(s)", "conductor", "orchestra", "soloist", "singer(s)", etc. I want to be able to sort by those fields. I want to list tracks.

Part of the issue is, of course, similar to the problem of listing anthologies here. There's no good way to list the separate short stories in an anthology, and there's no good way to list the information from a CD of Jussi Bjoerling singing duets by a variety of composers from a variety of operas with a variety of other singers.

*Actually, looking at your library, you use "various" a lot, and, in one instance, the record label.

36> And as I'm sure anyone who is using it this way has probably run into, the editions/works setup will fight against you. Different performances of the same song, covers, remixes, compilation albums, singles versus albums, etc.

LT is just not set up for it. And it'd take a fair amount of work to do that. Work which wouldn't be spent on the book-oriented features, which would make people who use it primarily as a book site unhappy. And it'd add to the complexity of the UI, which would make the site more complicated to use for tracking just books.

The fact is, everything is a trade-off. So apparently it's petty to think that the trade-off should favor the people that use LT as a book site versus those that use it as books plus music/movie/perfume/everything site.

#36 For conductor, orchestra, soloist, etc., I would have thought that you could get a long way with tags. I can't see any space for tracks other than public comments.

Up to now I have gone down the 'books only' line (more or less) but having looked at Lola Walser's music library - http://www.librarything.com/profile/LWMusic - I fear that I'm going to have to buy another account and transfer my CD listing from the boring Excel file to LT.

Turning off my staff flag because these aren't official comments and I can't be bothered finding references.

From *memory*, Tim has commented that he won't spend effort on features for other media types until he feels that we've done everything we can for books. I don't see that happening any time soon.

Requests for MusicThing and MovieThing in the past have been met with suggestions that someone else should develop it and then talk to him about LT integration.

He's explicitly said that he won't disallow non-book cataloguing. The only reason I haven't catalogued my DVDs and games is that I haven't finished cataloguing my books yet. (still?! After 4 and a half years?!??)

>13 MeditationesMartini: You can add your comics to a separate collection, and have that collection excluded from recommendations calculations. I thought there was a way to get recommendations based on a single collection - but either I've lost it, or I dreamed it.

>39 felius: hey, thanks!

You can add your comics to a separate collection, and have that collection excluded from recommendations calculations.

You must also exclude the comics from any other collection (like Your Library) that *is* used from recommendations.

#39
From *memory*, Tim has commented that he won't spend effort on features for other media types until he feels that we've done everything we can for books. I don't see that happening any time soon.

For some books and some authors, the lack of any other media features is making the cataloguing of the core book collections much more difficult. As in the example I gave above, where the Verdi page http://www.librarything.com/author/verdigiuseppe&all=1 has so many vaguely titled DVDs and CDs that it's hard to find the actual books. Or the many books where DVDs of the films are constantly sneaking into the editions list.

I've no objection to people cataloguing CDs, DVDs and other media, but the very fact that as a rule they have no identifying marker like ISBNs makes it more important that they can be clearly identified somehow. At the moment, some people put DVD in brackets after the name, or use a DVD tag, but it's not consistent.

So I think having DVD/CD/other media labels of some kind would actually do quite a lot to make the core book collection easier to manage.

> 38

#36 For conductor, orchestra, soloist, etc., I would have thought that you could get a long way with tags. I can't see any space for tracks other than public comments.

But that's not cataloguing. That's jury rigging.

#43 Any port in a storm, I guess ;-)

39> What I've seen is some people make a single collection that contains all the books they want to use for recommendations, then turn off recommendations for all the other collections. But if you meant ask for recommendations from one collection, no, I don't think that ever happened. Was asked for, yes, but I don't think it was ever implemented.

The problem is not just recommendations; it's also search. DVDs, music, perfumes, and so forth clutter up search, making it more difficult to use LT for its intended purpose. (And yes, libraries include DVDs, but it's fairly obvious at every level that DVDs are an "off-label" use of LT, not one that is supposed to be implied by the name.)

Libraries also stock short story collections, anthologies, magazines and other periodicals. Work on cataloguing these in a better way needs to be done before CDs, DVD,s etc.

#42 I have one DVD in my library because it has a ISBN number. Maybe that's because of the 50 page booklet that came with the DVD. And we know Tim is big on ISBN.

48> So really, you don't have the DVD in your library, you have the booklet. ;)

I have an ISBN'd DVD in my catalog, with nary a booklet to be found - Tom Goes To The Mayor. I added this before Tim turned off the ability to add non-book ISBN-having items via Amazon. I've left it my catalog in hopes that some other Tim* & Eric fan will find it.

*Heidecker, not Spalding

Quite a few DVDs have ISBNs. I always try to add mine from a library source first, since that usually captures the ISBN in the process.

52: You know, hurling insults about doesn't make your arguments any more convincing.

oh , I don't know, I'm pretty convinced.

>53 StormRaven: he was called to account in a public forum without warning or chance to discuss before being held up as a prime example of abuse. isn't that just another way of hurling an insult?

55: No.

52> Actually, I believe that excluding collections from recommendations only affects your recommendations. But LT still uses all the books in your library for calculating the recommendations of others.

But I could be wrong.

57>

Yes, that's correct.

54> and why are you pretty convinced, tomcat?

Ohhhh, that's right, the one who called you a "dick" (only notice, he really didn't call you a "dick" because you, after all, tomcat, according to the gobblydegook legalese rationale offered - reminiscent of Clinton's lawyers defining the word "is" - had decided to be a "dick" already); ergo, you might as well have called yourself a "dick" to begin with, since he's obviously not the one who called you or brought up "dick," as it related to you, in the first place (huh?), and then that same individual has the audacity to cite Todd's "suck it" in his exhortation to Todd that using such lingo won't help one in making one's arguments more convincing!

Either directly calling a person a "dick," or doing so in some labyrinthine, roundabout way so that only the "dick utterer" can rationalize his non "dick utterance," doesn't make your arguments any more convincing either.

59> I have to admire anyone who would call another person's writing "labyrinthine" after having posted what you just did. For all I could parse from that post, you may have just called ME a dick. ;)

I have a problem with people putting books they have read but don't own as part of their library. Not fair! It raises your total count and makes it seem like you have more books than I do. And I hate you for it. (lol)

61> Then you must really hate me for putting in books I neither OWN nor have READ! ;)

Nah, who am I kidding. You'll be too busy hating on folks like bluetyson who list every single short story as a separate book..

I'm playfully dancing about going nee-nir-nee-nir-nee-nee and suddenly I'm being flagged as abusive and "hurling insults"????

Are you mad?

perhaps I was called a 'dick' in reference to my dildo collection? In which case it should be 'dicks'.

63> Going nee-nir-nee-nir-nee-nee is strictly against the LibraryThing Terms of Service.

You are also not allowed to almost, but not quite, touch fellow LibraryThing users.

How about a round of vodkatinis on the house here, and then all you guys can go home - since by now everyone disagrees with everyone else about everything to do with LibraryThing collections, so there's nothing to talk about.

And, apparently, we're all dicks.

I'll drink to that!

I might even by persuaded to show my dildo collection to the assembly. It's really quite impressive!

*does not enter this thread-party simply because of the dildo mention*

but I see you are a memeber of the alternative sexuality group, Heather19?

Are dildos not alternative enough for you?

Too alternative?

I'm pretty sure that, by definition, dildos are an alternative.

Oh they are a wonderful alternative, I was just trying to convince myself not to bring my sex life into a "movies/etc" conversation. It obviously failed.

*munching popcorn* so what about your sex life then?

It's obviously not cinematic.