
LibraryThing Is Now Free to All - user_235711
https://blog.librarything.com/main/2020/03/librarything-goes-free/
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Sorion
Longtime LT user here. It is primarily a cataloging service. Catalogue your
library and make it easily searchable and organizable with extensive tagging.
They previously charged for logging more then 200 books in a year I believe.

The real highlight of the LT service is the forums. There are forums for
almost every reading genre and specialty book collecting genre. Some of the
most knowledgeable people about books reside in those forums.

How did LT survive? Because it and Goodreads are inherently different
services. Someone else described their usage of it and the differences between
them perfectly when they said that they keep track of what they have read in
Goodreads and what they own in LT. Plus LT has forums as I said and Goodreads
cannot compare with their commenting system and the communities created in LT.

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irrational
I own thousands of books. I think I'd rather read more books than catalog what
I own ;-) Too bad this didn't exist decades ago.

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angrygoat
I've got 1050 books all catalogued in LibraryThing. I find it quite worthwhile
– I can search my library, useful if you have an extensive reference
collection on a particular topic. And if I'm out at a bookshop wondering if I
have a book already, I can check! :)

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lonelappde
A true collector would buy the book regardless. The duplicates are part of the
character of the collection. If you like a book that much, gift the extra.

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crazygringo
Google Trends shows that GoodReads seems to get at least _100x_ the popularity
LibraryThing does.

Both sites were founded around 15 years ago.

But they're both still going. (GoodReads, of course, now being owned by
Amazon.)

Which seems like a pretty unusual situation to me -- can't think of too many
parallels where the extreme underdog doesn't either a) just call it quits or
b) keeps innovating until they get _some_ kind of "reasonable" market share,
whether that's 10% or 30% or 50% or 80%.

Above all in a social network. (A big value of GoodReads for me is seeing my
friend's books and activity too. As much as I'd be curious to try
LibraryThing, I don't think any of my friends have even heard of it.)

I'm quite curious how LibraryThing has managed to keep going despite such a
tiny userbase, comparatively? I'm genuinely impressed.

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BeetleB
My understanding is that hard core literary readers tend to prefer Goodreads,
so the S/N ratio is higher. That's the claim, no idea if it's true. I do
recall a fairly popular article some years ago talking about rating inflation
on the Internet in general, and they used GoodReads as the classic example -
where medicore books often get a 3.5-4 overall rating.

I probably should see if I can go through all my LT books and compare the
rating with that on GoodReads. Would make for a fun little project.

(Note: Just looked at a few random ones, and while LT ratings are lower, not
really by much (e.g. 3.8 vs 3.9).

I think a lot of hardcore readers don't care that much for the GoodReads
social aspects.

I made my account in 2010. I considered GoodReads, but LT won because they
allow you to download all your data. Maybe GoodReads does, but they either
didn't back then, or it was non-obvious. I haven't ever tried to look at
GoodReads again, but to be frank, I kind of like that LT looks like it was
made 15 years ago!

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lonelappde
> iterary readers tend to prefer Goodreads

You mean LibraryThing?

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BeetleB
Yup. My mistake.

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alphadevx
LibraryThing is used by fine press book collectors to discuss the physical
properties of fine editions from for example The Folio Society, Easton Press,
Centipede Press etc. The forums will discuss in length for example expensive
limited editions, the bindings, choices of paper etc. It really is a different
audience to Goodreads, which is more focused on reviewing the content of books
rather than the bindings.

If you love fine books and supporting small independent publishers,
LibraryThing is an amazing niche community.

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colordrops
Speaking of cataloging, my children and I have been spending time identifying
and cataloging the collection of minerals we've acquired over the years. I've
found an amazing app, Memento Database, that has great UX, very customizable
collection fields, and lots of functionality, including gsheets export and
built-in cloud sync and sharing. I'm sure it works for books as well.

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fvt
I had no idea this existed but seems useful.

Took a quick look at the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Notable gotcha: kids
under 16 (in the EU, 13 elsewhere) are prohibited from using this.

(Also, it says "Au revoir mes petits choux!", and I think it's funny.)

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pmcjones
I've been a happy LibraryThing user since since 2006.

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WorldMaker
Me too. (Even if I've fallen way off in week-to-week usage over the years
because of the luring convenience of ebooks. I know, I feel guilty about it
too.)

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wgyn
I've used LibraryThing since my senior year of high school and have always
loved it. As others have noted, unlike Goodreads, LibraryThing _isn 't_ a
social network. I'm an obsessive about what books I own, how to categorize
them, where/when I bought them, where/when I read them. I don't care for my
friends to know what I've been up to and I don't need their recommendations
(at least not through the web).

As an aside, I vaguely recall that at some point their memberships were pay-
what-you-can. Super curious what the distribution of payments looked like.

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charliepark
I'm looking for a solution to a problem, and I don't think Library Thing is
quite it (or maybe it is?), but I figure the folks in this conversation will
have some suggestions on how to move forward on it.

My dad has over 10,000 books. He's a retired professor, and he just … loves
books. He's older, and is trying to figure out what to do with his books. Most
of them aren't in great shape, so most general-purpose libraries aren't
interested. The topics span just about every topic you could think of —
philosophy, watercolor technique, Civil War history, chess strategy, ethics,
business, fiction — so it's not like there's a topic-specific library or
school that would be interested in them.

He'd love to get them to people who will really find value in them, whether
that's through a donation or through selling them, but he's not extremely
tech-savvy, and he lives across the country from me, so my ability to help
coordinate is fairly limited. I thought perhaps some sort of "catalog them,
then send to Amazon to sell on the secondary market" approach might work, but
that could also be a disaster.

Any ideas? Have any of you handled something similar?

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WorldMaker
The first step does sound like "catalog them", and LibraryThing is a great
tool for that (especially now with the expanded free access they just
announced here). The LibraryThing iOS/Android app includes a bar code scanner
to help.

LibraryThing's forums are also where I'd start to ask the hard questions of
what to do with the collection. Especially once it is cataloged you could get
a ton of good opinions in the LT forums on which books might have value where.
A lot of small and niche libraries already use LibraryThing for their
operations and you might be surprised who you network with once the overall
collection is cataloged.

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charliepark
Awesome. Hadn’t been aware the forums could be that granularly useful. Thank
you!

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raybb
I've been using Goodreads for years and am kinda tired of the UX (in
particular not being able to access private notes on mobile) but this doesn't
look too much better.

For those curious here's decent youtube video giving an overview of
LibraryThing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYOcRiXLcU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYOcRiXLcU)

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gman83
Pretty happy with Goodreads except that the search functionality sucks. Would
like something like this:

[https://www.imdb.com/search/title/](https://www.imdb.com/search/title/)

Where I can search for a novel in a certain genre from a certain publication
date with a certain rating from at least x users. Nothing like that seems to
exist for Goodreads.

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ztarven
Awesome. I love LibraryThing. It's one of my inspirations for creating
rate.house.

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dmos62
This is awesome! I just started browsing LT, and it has the feel of Hacker
News for books. I have tried multiple times to get into using Goodreads but it
just didn't work out, for whatever reason.

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alecjstewart
I'm in the exact same boat. Goodreads has always felt...clunky to me. This is
the first I've heard of LibraryThing, so I'm excited to try it out!

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PeterStuer
I registered an account in 2009 and started adding my books. Ran into the free
account limit, and gave up. I'd like to take it up again, but I have long
since forgotten that password and can't seem to find any way to do a password
reset. Anyone that knows a way to do it your help will be greatly appreciated.

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gravitas
Here you go:
[https://www.librarything.com/lost_something.php](https://www.librarything.com/lost_something.php)

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PeterStuer
worked like a charm. Great thx!

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jively
Been using LT for a year now for my 500+ collection, I also use TinyCat
because I like to be able to search and catalogue them. There's nothing out
there that compares IMO especially considering it's practically free. Really
really amazing service that I hope stays alive.

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anvarik
I dont get it, isn't this a service similar to Goodreads? Why was it not free?
Or what they were charging for?

I have never used it can someone please explain what are pros/cons compared to
Goodreads?

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rodolphoarruda
Thanks for sharing this. I just signed-up for the service right now and began
cataloging my books (around 1300), a cool thing to do during my family's
quarantine period.

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wnscooke
It is really too bad it doesn’t include the ability to read said catalogued
books.

That said, I wonder the catalogue could be exportable to a web-based option
like omega.org, which is self hosted.

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labratmatt
Long live LibraryThing! Cool service and cool library people.

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longtermd
Not working for Adidas at German exchanges :/
[http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=ADS1.F&currency=EUR&name=ADI...](http://stockjump.sos.gd/?symbol=ADS1.F&currency=EUR&name=ADIDAS%20AG/S%20ADR)

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ComputerGuru
Wrong thread.

