Thing #11

I was one of the co-editor/revisers of Thing #11 for the Web Challenge as a member of the committee. I am also a big Librarything fan with a paid membership and own one of the hand held barcode scanners they sell to make adding books easier. The scanner looks like a female lion, a cat scanner, get it? well, don't blame me, it wasn't my joke.

I like to add books that I mean to read and tag them "read later." I also tag books "gift ideas."

What I really use librarything for most often is for Tagmashing. I've found book titles for my collection of literary and popular culture cookbooks (Little House on the Prairie Cookbook, Are you Hungry Tonight, an Elvis Presley cookbook, the Nero Wolfe Cookbook, several different Jane Austen cookbooks, Mary Poppins cookbook, Red Wall cookbook and a truly awful Shrek cookbook are some of my collection).

I've found books over and over again for customers who remembered things about books that Library of Congress subject headings just don't cover. The tags Librarything users create are messy, unorganized, use inconsistent tenses and plurals but somehow with so many tags, you have a really good chance of finding books with the smallest hints from customers. "Mystery, New Jersey" is a tagmash that helped me out just the other day.

Here is the link to my first account on Librarything. I forgot the password and had to start over when I bought a paid membership. It has 19 books.