Comments on: Shelfari (et al) Gripes

By: Angela

Angela — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:59:31 +0000

I will ;)

By: Lenneth

Lenneth — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:23:19 +0000

I know what you mean when you mention LibraryThing feeling clunky. It irritates me too, but I really want to make sure my main book catalog is accurate and LT certainly does better than Shelfari in that respect. I hope that if you do try Good Reads, you’ll post about how it goes. :)

By: Angela

Angela — Thu, 15 May 2008 01:55:36 +0000

@Adia: thanks! I’ll check that out, then.

@daimira: Yes, the lack of the pretty is a negative for LibraryThing on my account. Actually, I don’t really need all the shiny-ness of Shelfari, but LibraryThing just feels clunky, which is a bad thing. I remember something like the 200-books limit, although I can’t be sure either. :)

@Lenneth: I actually have a “problem” with most online library/cataloging applications because I can’t list books that aren’t available in Amazon, for example. And I have a good couple of those, since I do have local (er, Filipino) books in my collection. It’s rather sad :(

By: Lenneth

Lenneth — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:28:48 +0000

I use LibraryThing. The main reason I hated Shelfari is because, at the time I tried it anyway, it wouldn’t let me catalog Japanese editions of manga. And yeah, the thing regarding correct editions? That bugged the heck out of me. I’m sticking with LibraryThing for the time being, and I plan to use tags to indicate what I’ve read and haven’t read, etc. I want my list to reflect my real library as closely as possible. I’m going to try Good Reads out if only for the sake of curiosity, but it seems to be more about networking and less about cataloging (from what I could tell at a glance). I may eventually use both if I really like the social networking stuff at Good Reads, but I think I’ll always primarily use LibraryThing. Which reminds me, I need to add Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man”, lol.

Here’s my library, fwiw: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=Lenneth

By: daimira

daimira — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:07:28 +0000

I have Shelfari and GoodReads. So far, Shelfari is prettier but GoodReads is more reliable. It still has the same problem regarding certain missing editions.

I used to have a LibraryThing account, but if I recall correctly, their free service only lets you log 200-something books. This may have changed since I last used it, I don’t know. Plus, it’s not at all pretty :P

By: Adia

Adia — Mon, 12 May 2008 05:05:50 +0000

I was rec’d Good Reads when I made a book related post on my LJ a few days ago. Seems quite good and has a clean interface from what I’ve seen. However, I haven’t used it that much yet. And I’ve also heard good things about LibraryThing.

By: Shelfari disappoints; where is a good online book community? « Pompous Punditry Personified

Sat, 10 May 2008 06:49:00 +0000

[…] I also found the site slow but was willing to overlook that since I still like keeping track of the books I’ve read on the Shelfari shelf that’s now displayed on my Facebook page. However, I doubt I’ll be visiting the site except when I finish a book to rack it up. I’m not the only one disappointed with Shelfari. […]

By: Angela

Angela — Sat, 10 May 2008 03:22:46 +0000

Tagging is great, but I like the special treatment one can do for certain things like read/owned/unread/plan to read/etc with Shelfari. I do have a LibraryThing account, but it felt a bit…clunky to me the two times I tried to get “into” it.

Shelfari lets you edit the edition you have across a number of editions found for that book, which is nice, although their algorithm can also be a little off, with some editions shown as separate books sometimes.

By: Court

Court — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:54:16 +0000

I’ve looked at Shelfari, but have never actually signed up for it. It looked pretty cool, but if I couldn’t list all my books in a series, it would really bother me too!

Right now, I use LibraryThing. I have no REAL problems with it. It goes down occassionally, but considering all the good stuff you can do with it, it doesn’t make it too bad. You can tag your books however you want (so I tag mine as “unread” instead of getting to use meta stuff like Shelfari has, but I think LibraryThing has an option as to whether you can mark it unread, adn you can always put the dates you started and finished reading the book). You can also completely edit the information of the books you enter in there, so if the default one it comes up with has a different cover than yours, you can change that really easily. So I’m happy with what it has to offer, but I don’t know if it would have everything you’re looking for. :)