Am I Book or Not?

[enochs_fable]

For my fellow bibliophiles:

LibraryThing versus GoodReads. Which one and why?
(I'm on goodreads, but I'm looking at librarything, and it looks pretty cool.)

Comments

[meranthi]

I like LibraryThing, but I've seen GoodReads. I like the tagging and classification (I'm a librarian at heart) and being able to sort easily.

[enochs_fable]

Are you on either?

[meranthi]

Sorry. Yes, I'm on LibraryThing. And I have a CueCat, which makes things *MUCH* easier to catalog. I really like it so far. We've done all our non-fiction, which is honestly the harder stuff, since a lot of it is pre-ISBN and certainly pre-barcodes.

[enochs_fable]

Ooh! You can use CueCat to catalog for LT? Or do you have ReaderWare or something else, instead?

I've often wondered about the non-fiction, since yeah, same problem for some of it (particularly when I was pondering trying to do it for my synagogue.)

[meranthi]

I just have a CueCat, so just by itself. Like magic! :)

You can add things ad hoc to the system. It searched either Library of Congress or Amazon.com. Amazon is actually more useful. You can search by title and author, and at least narrow it down. It takes a while to figure out the est searching strategy, when there isn't an ISBN or a bar code. I think it took me about 4 hours (in bits and pieces) to catalog our non-fiction. We have two 6' tall bookshelves. (Maybe longer, I'm a terrible judge of time)

I'm personally less picky about actual editions of stuff, so if I couldn't find the exact right one, I'd often put down the closest thing. But usually I could find the exact book.

[enochs_fable]

Now I want a CueCat!

[meranthi]

They aren't that expensive. Warning, they are (as far as I know) not USB compatible.

Oh, and I like LibraryThing because you can buy a lifetime membership for like $25.

[enochs_fable]

How do they connect? Parallel port?

[meranthi]

Non-techy me says the same place you plug in your keyboard.

If you don't have a USB keyboard. :)

(I really need to take a hardware class)

[literal_alchemy]

They have PS/2 to USB converters, if it's a standard older style keyboard plug you're talking about.