"My Librarian"
By Lark Birdsong
Birdsong Research
A few years back (okay 1980) there was a movie called “My Bodyguard” where a young student acquired his own personal bodyguard. I think we might have the same concept now for people who love books and information with a website that is in beta called www.LibraryThing.com as they can find a little bit of their own personal librarian on this website.
Currently there are already over 79,000 members as of this writing, which are willingly listing and cataloging the books they own or have read online so they can be shared with other members. Each book that is cataloged by a member is added to the collective wisdom on the website, which provides book recommendations to all members. LibraryThing.com only became a “real business” in May, 2006 and is adding members quickly.
Let’s take a look at some of the features of the LibraryThing.com site. One of the main features is that it helps people create a catalog of books and then connects them with other people of similar interests based upon the books they have cataloged. Additionally, groups are created around what you have cataloged so you can engage in the talk/chat sites or blogs. In a way LibraryThing.com is like a social group and electronic library with you or others being “Your Own Librarian” rolled into one site.
Of course we cannot replace our real librarians, yet this site has some useful concepts and tools for an individual or organization. It describes itself as “a full-powered cataloging application, searching the Library of Congress, all five national Amazon sites, and more than 45 world libraries and….an amazing social space.” One of the interesting features is the ability to search into other libraries for recommendations and the website predicts that future libraries will be added.
If you want, you can tag your books with words that are meaningful to you and/or use more formal methods such as Dewey or the Library of Congress systems. You can also view what other members have cataloged, tagged and listed relative to your books. You will hear the word tag a lot if you are online. Tags are like a collection of thoughts, concepts, or words thrown together in a cloud like fashion, with the ones receiving more attention (meaning tagged more often) highlighted. There are tag clouds and author clouds that are cataloged on the website for all members and for the books you alone have cataloged. It gives the reader the ability to see what is of interest to other people immediately.
Another interesting feature is one that tells you of various names an author might have published under. You can also be as private as you want to be. You only need a user name to become a member and then the rest is up to you on how much you want known. You have the ability to use LibraryThing.com on mobile devices as well.
Like a library, it will take some time to organize your books in a thoughtful and useful manner. If you want to input more than 200 books there are two paid accounts. For a fee of $10 you will be able to have one year of unlimited book cataloging and if you want more, say a lifetime, it will cost you $25. Organizational accounts are available for nonprofits and for profits as well and can be useful as discussed below.
Let’s look at an example. I searched on the word “business” and found 12 categories. I clicked on “business intelligence” and found useful information on other words people were using for this concept (these are the tags people input to describe the book) and related subjects and periodicals. If I input the word “dogs” (my dog Willy made me do it), I find that it is “used 3,243 times by 777 users using the tag “dogs.” I can see how people have rated Marley and Me, by John Grogan, and a host of related authors, subjects, tags and other fun details around the word “dogs.”
So what might some of the uses be for this site besides receiving book recommendations and ideas? One could call up LibraryThing.com on their mobile device while in a bookstore to see what others have found interesting before they decide to buy a book.
Or an organization could use it as part of their knowledge management and desire to use the human intelligence each employee brings to the organization. Imagine a company that is in a competitive industry and spread across several locations. Perhaps they get their employees to input the books they have read with the tags as they perceive the information and recommendations. The company and other employees could look at the collective knowledge and recommendations and gain a lot of insight.
Or perhaps one can use it for pure fun, reading and or learning. Always worthwhile endeavors! And remember I said these are just some of the uses. So much more can be done with this site and it is yours for the learning. Happy Search!
Should you need assistance with information
or research please contact me at
or 303-884-8666
