This is ridiculous. I am supposed to be working on a survey catalogue for a textiles artist and I have suddenly been sucked into LibraryThing. An idle click of someone's library tagcloud on their sidebar led me down the rabbithole and I thought maybe I could just enter a few of the books sitting around me while I resize these images.
40-odd books later and very late into the night, I have to force myself to go to bed. Granted, I did resize those 120 images, but then I woke up extra early and just had to run to the computer to enter some more books. Then I rode to the BookStud and looked up at my shelves here as I opened the door, and... fired up the computer to get into LibraryThing.
I'M ADDICTED! Help! I just can't stop. I'm so curious: how many books do I own? And the big one: will there be more fiction or non-fiction? I resisted getting into LibraryThing last year or earlier this year (goodness time flies) when Laura did her library, and obviously for a good reason! But now that I've started,
I. Just. Can't. Stop!
[LATER]
I'm discovering all sorts of new things about books I've owned for quite a while. Like this author. Is there really somewhere out there called ROBIN BAGILHOLE? Published by Brian Trodd??!! Hmmm.
[LATER STILL]
I got home and got Bumblebee into a hot bath (we rode home in heavy rain, both sopping), switched on the computer and... LibraryThing is offline for an hour or so, doing some roadwork. Wow. I never thought about that possibility. I guess I'll HAVE to do some work. Phew.
17 comments:
I know EXACTLY what you mean. I had a day off work to study, in peace, without the child and I ended up spending most of the day putting books into LibraryThing. Give in to it, you'll run out of books, eventually.
It IS the most addictive thing, but what a terrific addiction. And when you see your catalogue finished (is that possible while you still breath and are able to buy books?), it's a wonderful feeling and sense of achievement. You may also experience a bit of a shock, as I did, when you actually find out how many books you do have.
Best $25 I've spent on the 'Net ...
You can't stop 'cos you is a lovely book nerd.
I applaud this service, especially since we live two blocks apart and you don't charge late fees.
xx
Amen to you all.
Looks like I'm in for a rough weekend.
(and Z, it's called 'forgetfulness' :) )
So how long does it take? I've been tempted to start, but I'm trrified about how long the project will be
Jennifer, it takes very little time to enter the details for one book, even if you enter the whole lot manually (as I seem to have to do at the moment with all my obscure letterpress stuff). The total amount of time depends on how many books you happen to own. And I seem to own a LOT. I love the way that you can have 200 books without formally joining. That must be the average benchmark. I'll get there without leaving the room, and I have bookshelves in all my rooms. Sigh.
There is actually some Macintosh software that lets you take pictures of the barcodes on your books and catalogue them (by looking up the information in similar sources).
http://www.delicious-monster.com/
http://www.deepprose.com/
I just read about these two days ago, but my mac is in the shop ( :( ) so I haven't been able to try them out.
Anyway, it seems like a (possibly) more painless way to enter the books than typing in the numbers or whatever. But I don't know if you get the same "community" aspect.
Hee hee, I can just picture you with your new addiction.
I was tempted to get into LibraryThing a while back but figured that I might spend my retirement pretending to be a cataloguer - NOT my secret desire but I wasn't sure how much I'd miss being a librarian. Strangely, not at all.
Now don't neglect your bookbinding duties!
Ezra, I think I do like the community aspect. I think Zoe hit on it too... this means my friends can look up what they want to borrow, and I can keep track of what I've lent. Also good to find likeminded reader/collectors.
Val, I spent all day today bookbinding, and I'm hoping to blog that once the job is finished, and after this textiles catalogue is in the bag (which it is very NOT at the moment, so I'm about to burn the midnight oil).
I managed to avoid taking the laptop into the spare room where the 4 fiction bookshelves live, 'cos I'm a scrooge and didn't want to pay to join, but you say you can log 200 for free??? I might have to try harder not to now...(I already have not enogh time to do everything I want to)
I have a lot of books, too, and I'd love to have a catalogue of them, just as long as someone else did it for me! My latest estimate was about 2,000, which I fear will take a very long time.
You know what? I just did my head in looking at your author cloud on LT. I found it really hard to parse, but I liked that about it too. So, did my head in looking at it for too long.
Jennifer, I think I've got an estimate like that too. Scary, eh?
MCrit: I thought you had no spare time! Heh.
I'm trying to be very strong, resolving to not post or LibThing until this catalogue is DONE. Wish me luck.
Well, it didn't take _that_ long to do my head in. It never takes much. In fact I've just put in my (new) contacts for the first time, and everything is HUUUGE! So that's doing my head in right now. It's a really weird thing that one.
Thanks so much (ironically said) for pointing me in the direction of LibraryThing - what a wormhole - each book entry took me ages as I had to see who else had it & what else they were reading. I'm going to have to ration myself to a book a day...
nyuk nyuk nyuk.....
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