Thanks to Marie (the Boston Bibliophile) for posting today’s Tuesday Thinger prompt, which is: Why LT?
Why did you choose to open and maintain an LT account? Do you/did you use other online cataloging/social networking sites, like GoodReads or Shelfari? Do you use more than one? Are they different or do they serve different purposes?
I wish I could remember how I learned of LT… I opened my account mid-April 2008, and joined Shelfari around the same time (at the invitation of a friend). I catalogued about 10 books on each site, then really took off with LT. I like the page displays at LT; they’re more straightforward and less cluttered, which appeals to me.
Of course I love the Early Reviewer program on LT. Participating in this has really opened up a lot of opportunities for me, as well as helping me to practice the analysis and synthesis that is required in a review. I imagine that when re-enter the workforce (outside the home) these skills will not be as rusty as they might otherwise have been.
I don’t have the time/inclination to maintain both sites, although I considered sharing the Shelfari account with my kids so they can catalog their libraries and connect with their friends online. I do like the Shelfari feature that allows you to upload your address book and find friends who have accounts there. If this is available on LT, I’m not aware of it.
I didn’t know about the GoodReads site until I saw the prompt for today’s post. I did take a quick look; it seems to me that it more closely resembles Shelfari than LibraryThing.
To summarize: LT not only helps me to catalog and organize my library, but also has a great opportunity in the Early Reviewer program; the emphasis on social networking seem to be less at LT than it is at Shelfari or GoodReads. (IMHO of course!)
An update on my Tuesday Thingers post of last week, May 27: some things in my life (generally those things that don’t need to be fed or cleaned, or are not accessible to the rest of the family) are nicely organized: my shoes, my spice cabinet (pictured last week), and my books, for example. Other things look like they’re in a state of controlled chaos: the mountain of paperwork and my car (we joke that we could live in the car for a week with all the essential STUFF I have packed in there!)
I will have to check out those others when I have a chance
I think above all, LT’s social environment is much improved over the others. I can read everything from the groups I’m in on one page without having to go into each individual group (which seems like Shelfari and Anobii can’t do. I can’t even figure out GoodReads enough to figure out what else to do with it other than say ‘I’m reading these books’).
What’s interesting is that LT is less about acquiring ‘friends’ but more about making friends, if that makes sense? The groups and talk areas are much easier to use and therefore more suited to making friends within groups. I doubt I could have found any group like this on the other sites, where we’d start a webring!
I agree with what you say about making connections … also, because of groups like ER I’m corresponding and exchanging ideas with others who don’t necessarily share the same reading interests as I, but there is other common ground.