#11 - librarything

I'm a big fan of LibraryThing. It's really designed for people to catalogue the books they own, but working in a library I don't tend to buy many books. So I have been using it to track books I have read. For books that I actually own, I add a tag "own". This is one of the beauties of so many web 2.0 apps - there is not always a "right" or only way to use them. There is often enough flexibility that you can tailor the app to suit your own needs.

I don't tend to use the social side of LibraryThing very much but it's interesting to poke my head in the forums occasionally. The new "Common knowledge" feature is great. It allows users to add information about a particular book. Characters, important places, awards, etc.

The organisation of the site works really well. Click on a book in my library and I get a page of information about that book. Tags other people have used, links to reviews, common knowledge, and recommendations. It's also possible to see anti-recommendations, a cute and fun but perhaps otherwise pointless function.

One of the best things about LibraryThing is that the founder and other staff are constantly working on it and developing new ideas. It never stagnates. They seem happy to try out new features and see what people think of them and how they get used. This is a great thing for a web 2.0 application.

Oh, here's my library.