Wednesday 14 July 2010

Things 14 & 15: LibraryThing

I have been using Librarything in earnest since the spring of 2009. Part of the stimulus was when Clare & I joined the CamLETS local exchange token system, and had the idea that one of the services we might offer was the loan of music scores. I have listed all our individual scores, and a few of the anthologies. A random selection from that catalogue is now embedded as a widget in this Blurtmetry blog.

My long-term intention is to catalogue the rest of the music anthologies, and the poetry books and magazines.

As in more than one other case, I have found that 23things has rekindled my interest and led me to explore the resource further. I am delighted, in going through Librarything, to find the reviews that Librarythingers have added to their catalogue entries. A similar service is offered by Amazon, I know; I am not going to ignore the links between Librarything and Amazon, but I felt that Librarything was inflicting less pressure to buy.

I have toyed with the idea of creating an additional Librarything account for the Haddon Library. My thinking was that this would enable the kind of book-tagging by readers that seemed good when I was discussing Thing 8. However, any such project, if it was to grow and prosper, would require a properly-thought-through plan rather than a hasty implementation as part of my 23things homework. The Haddon has enough plans on the go at the moment.

I have heard rumours that the Aquabrowser project may come to enable tagging across the University's collections. I have added the Cambridge Library Widgets blog to my Google reader, and will keep an eye open for these developments.

4 comments:

  1. What a great use for LibraryThing, your music scores loans!

    Yes, there will be an option for users to add tags, rate items and write reviews in Aquabrowser, though they'll have to create a username and password for it. It's called My Discoveries - Ed talks about it in on the Library Service Developments blog which you have probably already seen. Anyone can try it out at the University of Chicago Library's version, it's not restricted to staff/students.

    Celine

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tnx. I hadn't seen that blog you mention -- I'll check it out now.

    Aidan

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Cambridge Library Widgets blog links points to your own Thing 8 post, instead of http://culwidgets.blogspot.com/. Was that intentional?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tnx. That was careless. Have amended the link.

    ReplyDelete