About / Frequently Asked Questions

Have another question? Found a bug? Want a feature? Go ahead and email Tim at timspaldinglibrarything.com. You can also check out the LibraryThing blog to learn about new features, take user polls, etc.

What is LibraryThing?

LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. Because everyone catalogs together, you can also use LibraryThing to find people with similar libraries, get suggestions from people with your tastes and so forth.

What software does it require?

None. If you can read this, you can use LibraryThing.

What does it cost?

At present, a free account allows you to catalog up to 200 books. A paid account allows you to catalog any number of books. Paid accounts cost $10 for a year or $25 for a lifetime. I conservatively predict the revenue will enable me to recline all day on an enormous pile of gold.

What else does LibraryThing do?

In addition to cataloging your own library, LibraryThing allows you to "tag" your books (see below), check out other people's libraries, tells you who has similar tastes, etc.

What information do I need to give up?

None. Setting up an account requires only a user name and a password. You can edit your profile to make yours a "private" account. With a private account, nobody else can see what books you have.

What are tags? (short answer)

Tags are a simple way to categorize books according to how you think of them, not how some library official does. Anything can be a tag—just type words or phrases, separated by commas. Thus one person will tag the The DaVinci Code "novels" while another tags it "trashy, religion, mary," and still another only "summer home." Tags are particularly useful for searching and sorting—when you need a list of all your novels or all the books at the summer home.

What are tags? (long answer)

Once you have a hundred books or so, you need some way to organize them. Library subject classifications, including that of the Library of Congress, are one solution. For most personal libraries, however, they aren't much use. "Tags," informal, personal markers used on blogs and sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us, provide a better model.

Here are two examples from my experience:

1. The LC catalogs Bean's Aegean Turkey, a guide to the archaeological sites of Turkey's western coast, under the single subject, "Ionia." For me, however, the book is about turkey and archaeology, tags I've applied to dozens of books, including Bean's other archaeological guides.
2. The LC thinks Bernadette Brooten's Love between women: early Christian responses to female homoeroticism is about six different things, including the mouthful "Bible. N.T. Romans I, 18-32 — Criticism, interpretation, etc. — History — Early church, ca. 30-600." I get by with the tags early church, and homosexuality. To these I added the tag divination. Although the book doesn't say much about divination, its comments on the topic were actually the reason I picked it up.

Tags can also mark "favorites" or "books to read." I've used the tag ben's to mark books I should return to my friend Ben. (That I included them in my catalog is, however, a bad sign for that!)

In addition to being a way to organize your own collection, social content sites like Flickr and Del.icio.us have shown that large numbers of different users' tags produce categorization structures ("folksonomies") that can surpass traditional taxonomies. (See Clay Shirky's talk "Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links and Tags" for a stimulating discussion.) As LibraryThing grows, I expect to use this data in new and interesting ways.

Who created LibraryThing?

LibraryThing was designed and implemented by Tim Spalding, a web developer and web publisher based in Portland, Maine. Tim also runs www.isidore-of-seville.com, www.ancientlibrary.com, www.bramblestory.com and mothboard.com.

Where does LibraryThing get its information?

LibraryThing uses Amazon and libraries that provide open access to their collections with the Z39.50 protocol. The protocol is used by a variety of desktop programs, notably bibliographic software like EndNote. LibraryThing appears to be the first mainstream web use.

How do I change the order of my books?

You can sort by author, title and many other fields by clicking on the name of the field. Blue names are clickable; black ones are not.

What's up with importing from Amazon wish lists?

The Universal Import works on Amazon wish lists, but it takes a little tweaking. Wish lists have two URLs, the one you use when you're signed in as the person and the one you use if you're not. LibraryThing has to access Amazon, and it can't do so signed in as you. Therefore you must find the Wish list URL that anyone can use. First sign out of Amazon so you can be sure what's going on. Then go to the home page and click the link "wish lists." (Up at the top near the shopping cart.) They'll be a "Find a Wish List" area for you to type in your name or email address. This will give you a "generalized" URL for your wishlist. Feed it into LibraryThing and voila.

Wishlists often have multiple pages. Unfortunately, you need to submit the URL for each page.

How do I see other fields, like ISBN or LC Call Number?

Click "change fields" on the gray and yellow bar in the catalog view.

How do I change my username or password?

Email timspaldinglibrarything.com. Include your current username and password, and whatever the changes are.

Why do I share a book with someone even though the books are different?
Why doesn't it notice when I share a book with someone?
(And associated questions)

Short answer: There are some quirks in the system. They will probably lessen, but the system will never be perfect.

Long answer: I get a lot of mail about this issue, so I'm going to explain it fully. Deciding whether two books are the same or not is a delicate question, both technically and philosophically. The only "unique" information is the ISBN number, if a book has one. Unfortunately, going by ISBN numbers alone would render US softcover, British softcover, US hardback and British hardback editions of Harry Potter all "different." Imagine if LibraryThing had separate review pools for each of these: Tansatlantic communication would suffer!

Ideally, LibraryThing should recognize all editions of a book, no matter where they were published and in whatever format—from softcover and hardback to audio, Braille and eBook. It should consider two copies of Romeo and Juliet as the same book, even if one is the Penguin and another the Signet. At some point, however, things get debatable. Is an annotated edition of Romeo and Juliet the same? The shooting script for the movie? A Spanish translation? West Side Story?

To resolve these issues LibraryThing looks at two things: (1) the last name of the author and (2) the title of the book. The system attempts to solve some of the more notable issues with this method. Capitalization is ignored, as are most subtitles. Thus, LibraryThing treats as "the same" what the Library of Congress calls A Time in Rome, but Amazon dubs A Time in Rome (Penguin Travel Library). (Amazon does that sort of thing a lot.)

As can be expected, the system is imperfect. Last names vary more than you might think. The same book sometimes lurks behind a different title—witness the first Harry Potter, which had a different title in Britain and the U.S. Subtitles are sometimes significant, particularly in a series. The Amazon or library record is just plain wrong more often than you might think.

LibraryThing could certainly do better. A better guess could arise from checking lots of factors—ISBNs, call numbers, publication dates, page counts, etc. Unfortunately, with over half a million books in the system, such a check would take time. With speed at a premium, most users would not consider that time well spent.

In the next few weeks I will be looking at whether users might flag some of the more eggregious examples.

(yes, these are my books)