Book Cataloguing - An analysis of online sites.

(along with a bit of bragging about my own)

I love cataloguing books. I've kept an excel spreadsheet on my books for about 10 years now and the one I have today is a far far cry from the rudimentary one I first started with. It's been through 3 job changes. See, I email it to work and if it's a really slow day with nothing to do, I might work on it - bad little worker bee I can be.
Back in the beginning it was pretty basic. I had listed the ISBN, Author, Title, Price (retail or Replacement Value Cost of course) and that was about it. I slowly began adding more columns with more information such as Genre, Rating, Year Published, Year Read, and Publisher.

(click on pictures for larger view)

Along the way I also learned how to do Hyperlinks so I could link a page from Amazon and I learned how to add comments (in which I add hero/heroine and brief blurb to jog my memory)

Then sometime in 2004, The Wonderful Rosario, who is the Excel Queen, helped me and added graphs so I could visually keep track of the books.


So with this labour of love and still very much a work in progress that's gone on for 10 years now, it will always be my favourite method of cataloguing books. But as the internet has grown and expanded, there are now a number of websites where you can catalogue books. I've signed up with three of them

• LibraryThing
• Shelfari
• Goodreads

I started first with LibraryThing and then sometime later opened an account with Shelfari and finally not so long ago opened another account with Goodreads.
LibraryThing remains my favourite. At the time, and I don't know if it's changed or not, but you could enter so many books into your LibraryThing account and it was full. If you paid a one time fee of $25 the amount you could enter was unlimited and you also had access to other features such as group discussions, recommendations etc. As I had way more books than the free number, I decided to pay the money and it's a decision I've never regretted. I don't know if that is still the case or not though.

Both Shelfari and Goodreads are free.


LibraryThing

But what makes me glad I signed up for LibraryThing and what keeps it as my favourite online book cataloguing site are a number of things. First off, I find it much easier to add books at LibraryThing. The tabs along the top make it very easy to find out which part of LT you are looking for, whether it's adding new books, checking your shelf - in which you have a number of choices - by a list, by covers, from 10 covers to page up to 100 per page. It's easy to find the profile page where you can add an avatar, add a website or blog, or give a brief description about yourself.
While checking out the site again for this post I noticed yet another feature I hadn't discovered before, the local page. When I clicked on there, they had a listing of all the library branches in the city and a few book stores listed.
And their customer support is excellent. When I first started cataloguing books, I had a number that didn't have covers. This didn't make me happy as you can tell by my spreadsheet graphs - I like visuals. I emailed them asking if there was any way I could add covers and within a day received a reply that yes, I could indeed add cover since I had a scanner. Anyone who follows this blog knows I'm not all that good with this kind of thing, so when I ran into trouble uploading the covers, I had an email conversation with step by step instructions and even advice into how I could do it. And amazingly enough I could figure it out! For that customer support alone, I was glad I paid for a membership.
You can also add LibraryThing to your blog (for which I had help *g*) There are a number of group discussions although I only belong to one. Another added feature I like is a list of the top member who share the same books. It's interesting clicking on some of them and seeing who I know.
Adding books is simple. You can do it by author, title or ISBN number. Searching for books in LibraryThing is very simple. It's easy to edit and/or add reviews, simply click on the pencil. Other than the original price of membership, I haven't found any drawbacks with LibraryThing at all and I didn't mind paying the membership fee for everything I was getting.
I give LibraryThing an A for ease of getting around, features ect.


Shelfari

As more and more readers started blogs, I began noticing more and more of them had Shelfari so I decided to sign up with them too. The have a number of features I like, though I still don't like it as much as LibraryThing. First off, it's free. You can't really beat that price. Second, I like the look of their 'shelves' much better; they are much more professional looking. Adding new books is fairly easy, but not as easy as LibraryThing. When adding a new books, they have a number of options;

• I plan to read
• I'm reading
• I've read
• Favorites (even though they spell it wrong)
• Own
• Wish List

For me, that's too many choices and I find it rather a nuisance. Since I can read a book in a day if I don't get distracted by this here computer and all the blogs and everything, if I want to buy a book, buy it the next day, read it the day after that and finish it two days later, that's a whole lot of changing I have to do on said list. You can add reviews on Shelfari, but it took me some clicking around to be able to figure out how to do that. They also have group discussions and it was the AAR Group discussion that finally got me using Shelfari more.
Another thing I don't care for that much is the shelf itself. You can only see 27 on one page at most and they are rather tightly packed and hard to make out.
Also, they don't have the feature of adding covers if one isn't already provided, a minus as far as I'm concerned.
Shelfari can also be added to a blog but since I didn't add the one for LibaryThing to mine, I can't really compare this feature.
I give Shelfari a B-. It would be lower except I really do like the look of those shelves.


GoodReads

I'll be honest here and say I'm least familiar with GoodReads. It's the most recent one I've signed up for.
But what I have seen of it by going in, adding books, clicking around etc. hasn't impressed me too much. After initially adding my books from my excel spreadsheet I find it very difficult to find out how to add more books. Each time it's taken a lot of clicking and searching out where to go. Even tonight I had to look around until I finally saw in the middle of the page where it says Add More. The choices aren't overwhelming like they are in Shelfari - just three to choose from

• Read
• Currently Reading
• To Read

but if you make a mistake and add the wrong label, it's a pain to try and correct. You can also add reviews, but I find it difficult to find out how, takes too much clicking for me.
It strikes me as more of a place to meet people then cataloguing books. I've had a few request from people to 'add me as a friend' and maybe it's a generational thing, but if I don't know you, I'm not going to add you as a friend just so I can have a higher number of 'friends'. I also don't think they have the option of adding book covers, I don't know, I haven't tried. But if they do, it would be too bothersome for me to add them seeing as I can't even find how to simply add books much of the time. I don't know if you can add Good Reads to blogs or not. It's to complicated for me to try and do it.
I realize they are the 'new kids on the block' but I'm just not impressed with them.
At the moment and until they become more user friendly, I give them a D.

• So now some question:
• Do you catalogue your books?
• Do you use an online site and are you happy with it?
• Which is your favourite and why?
• Which features do you wish they had?
• Do you have more than one?
• Which would you recommend and why?
• What are the drawbacks?

*****~~~~~*****

Update: After Bev's comment, I emailed LibraryThing and asked if they had any plans to be able separate books into different categories such as wish list, TBR and read. There was an answer in my inbox this morning that yes indeed, this is a feature that LibraryThing has planned and should be operational soon.
Again, I was impressed with their speedy answer and commend their Customer Service division.