LibraryThing, My New Love

Posted April 24, 2015 by Alison Mitchell

There’s a lot to love about libraries, and there is definitely a lot to love about LibraryThing.

Maybe some people knew about this fabulous program before SLIS, but I didn’t.  When Candy Schwartz assigned a small LibraryThing project in 415 my first semester, my mind was basically blown.  Oh, the possibilities! This semester, I used an assignment in 488 to do what I really wanted with LibraryThing, creating a website that weaves book recommendations through my personal and professional background.

As part of the project, I cataloged over 400 children’s, adult fiction and nonfiction books with basic tags that I plan to refine over time.  I’m only inputting books that I’d actually recommend to someone else — believe me, there were many that didn’t make the cut.  I went through our library history, my old journals, all our bookshelves, fifteen years of my book club booklists, and my older daughter’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of everything she’s ever read.  What a trip down memory lane.

Even better than the fun of cataloging the books is the fact that I’ve already used the system several times.  To add to a list of good read-aloud books at work, I just had to click on the corresponding tag.  A friend wanted a recommendation of books about spring to read to her son’s class, and I could pull up all the garden-themed books in a few seconds.

LibraryThing, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.