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.<p>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.<p>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.
Google Trends shows that GoodReads seems to get at least <i>100x</i> the popularity LibraryThing does.<p>Both sites were founded around 15 years ago.<p>But they're both still going. (GoodReads, of course, now being owned by Amazon.)<p>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 <i>some</i> kind of "reasonable" market share, whether that's 10% or 30% or 50% or 80%.<p>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.)<p>I'm quite curious how LibraryThing has managed to keep going despite such a tiny userbase, comparatively? I'm genuinely impressed.
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.<p>If you love fine books and supporting small independent publishers, LibraryThing is an amazing niche community.
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.
I had no idea this existed but seems useful.<p>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.<p>(Also, it says "Au revoir mes petits choux!", and I think it's funny.)
I've used LibraryThing since my senior year of high school and have always loved it. As others have noted, unlike Goodreads, LibraryThing <i>isn't</i> 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).<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Any ideas? Have any of you handled something similar?
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.<p>For those curious here's decent youtube video giving an overview of LibraryThing: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYOcRiXLcU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYOcRiXLcU</a>
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.
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.
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.
I dont get it, isn't this a service similar to Goodreads? Why was it not free? Or what they were charging for?<p>I have never used it can someone please explain what are pros/cons compared to Goodreads?
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.
It is really too bad it doesn’t include the ability to read said catalogued books.<p>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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