LibraryThing and CueCat Redux

Posted At : January 5, 2007 9:22 AM | Posted By : Clay McGovern
Related Categories: Website Review

Just ran across a really cool social networking site based on one's book collection. It's called LibraryThing and it's an online catalog where you can store your own personal library.

But this is only the beginning. You get library quality data about the books in your collection and you can share your catalog with other users to connect with people who have similar reading habits (or dissimilar for that matter). You get a nice tag cloud for each book in your collection, a list of similar books in other fellow owner's collections, ratings, and much more. It's a really neat idea and will prove very useful to me.

I've played around with similar concepts with music CD trading called lala.com and for music listening with Last.fm and audioscrobbler.

I was also pleased to see that LibraryThing is selling CueCat barcode scanners to use to help catalog your library quickly and easily. The price is $15 which is a lot more than the original price - free. Check out my entry on the CueCat for details. And if you join LibraryThing, check out my library.

Clay's Library

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Love the CueCat story! I've seen that hang hanging around your office but I had no idea what it was for. Good to know.

Have you actually used it for the book/CD barcode application, yet? Does it work well and is it actually worth the $15 dollars? Or should I look for a "real" handheld scanner?

Derek
# Posted By Derek | 1/5/07 3:09 PM
I have used it for LibraryThing. I entered 155 books this morning. It worked on every barcode that properly encoded the ISBN. That's the biggest issue, some of the books in my collection didn't have the "proper" barcode. It's easy enough to use the numeric keypad for those. Speedwise, I think the Cat and the Pad are tied (at least for me). I wouldn't spend the $15. I'd look for one cheaper on eBay or elsewhere. Ask around the office and see if you can find someone with one. You'd be surprised how many of the things are floating around.
# Posted By Clay McGovern | 1/5/07 3:32 PM
Interesting.
Once my books are out of boxes this will rock my world.
# Posted By Sean | 1/5/07 5:50 PM
You will also be interested in knowing about a similar product that runs on your desktop, keeps the database on your desktop and lets you share that information either to public or on a selective basis. Check out Dekoh Books on http://www.dekoh.com.

Adding books here is simple. Through search and add. we search on the web and show you details of matching books, that you can add to build up your collection. We are looking for ways to make it even more easier for those who want to add in bulk.

We may also provide integration with someof the popular website with published API.

We would love to have your feedback on this product.
# Posted By Jay | 4/5/07 6:41 AM
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