In All Reality

Over the holidays I’ve been going through my ever-lengthening To-Do List and trying to cross off some of the things that I’ve been meaning to get to for quite some time.  I decided to put off teaching myself how to train ferrets and underwater basket weaving, and instead try and finally get my massive book collection into an online, electronic format.  I went straight to www.librarything.com to get started because, well, everyone uses it (or so I’ve observed).  What follows is an overview of my trial experiences with the LibraryThing service, Shelfari, and Goodreads:

LibraryThing

This service has come highly recommended from several people I know.  I few of them even have updates via their site when they add new books, and there seems to be an integration capability with FriendFeed.  After going through their site briefly, I created an account and started to add books.

Pros:

• Huge user backing (come on…everyone’s doing it).
• Customized search options from multiple library databases.
• You can use a barcode scanner to import books (that’s really nifty).  Problem is, you have to have access to a barcode scanner.
• Advanced statistics viewing (users, libraries, book types, etc.)
• Ability to create widgets to embed on your site/blog/whatever.
• Well-developed community of readers, reviewers, and authors.  Good perk if you’re in it for the people as well as the books.
• Supports a multitude of languages, netting it a much larger user base.
• Allows you to link your books to Amazon with a referral code so you can make some bank.

Cons:

• Since LibraryThing seems to be so popular, they have some really critical performance issues.  As I write this, their site has been down for almost 2 hours 3 hours now.
  EDIT: at the time of writing, LibraryThing was undergoing massive maintenance.  They never bothered to give a notification about that though.
• The site is horrid looking.  Not quite 1990-era…but almost.
• The customized search makes you choose which library from the 690+ they have to search from.  Not a big deal, except they neglected to include a “Search From All” feature.  So if one library doesn’t have your book, it becomes a guessing game to which library you go to search for it.  You can always manually enter a book, though.
• Adding books is time-consuming and somewhat painful.  Besides to aforementioned search issue, every time you add a book you must search again for another one.  This is a massive usability problem if you’ve done a search by author and want to add multiple books.
• Likewise, choosing your correct edition is a headache as you have to view the books individually and select the edition from their details page.  Because of the performance issues, this is a bigger hassle than it really needs to be.
• Semi-pay service.  200 books for free, then you have to pay $10/yearly or $25/lifetime.  Not a big deal to the casual reader, but for weirdos like me who have hundreds of books it is an imposition.  But, I’m not opposed to supporting such a great idea as a personal online book catalog.

Shelfari

Apparently this service was featured on Oprah, or her magazine, or another of her billion publications; I didn’t know that going in to it.  I originally found the site from this post: Catalog your books online! (Including Test).  Kim, the author, had embarked upon a similar journey as what I’m describing here.  Credit where credit is due :)

Pros:

• Shelfari, in basic visual terms, is much easier to look at and comprehend than the retro LibraryThing setup.  There are less navigation options, it it follows a slightly more traditional navigation structure.
• The site doesn’t have near the performance issues that LibraryThing did.  However, there is a downside (see below).
• Shelfari is owned by Amazon, so it has the full backing of one of the most powerful entities on the web (for whatever that’s worth).
• Adding books is a very easy process.  You can add multiple books from a returned list, with details such as “I’ve read this” or “I own this book” all in AJAX-ified goodness.
• Allows the creation of multiple widgets, each being customized to your needs.  Of the 3 services I’ve tested, this is the only one that powers its widgets with CSS that can be restyled to suit your whims.
• Completely free.
• Allows you to link your books to Amazon with a referral code so you can make some bank.
• Book searchs are more compiled, with less inclusion of extraneous copies and versions of the same book (duplicates).

Cons:

• There may not be many performance issues, but there isn’t a very large user base (yet).  The interface for your bookshelf (books you’ve added) is very graphics & javascript heavy…so any increases in popularity might cause it to become extremely cumbersome.
• The community surrounding Shelfari is relatively non-existence…at least compared to the behemoth LibraryThing.
• As far as I can tell, only supports English across the site.  Doesn’t mean you can’t add books in other languages though.
• Lots of fun ads from Amazon :)
• Even though their site is obviously superior in usability and style to that of LibraryThing, they seem to do less to promote themselves than LT does.
• No FriendFeed integration (negligible).
• Lacks some of the statistical data about libraries and individual books that true bibliophiles may crave (also negligible).

Goodreads

I happened upon Goodreads while checking FriendFeed to see if they had an integration available or Shelfari.

Pros:

• Very stylish, and yet still light on the graphics and bandwidth.  Feels much more optimized than either of the other services, having very fast response times to information requests.  Follows a navigation scheme that is different from Shelfari, yet still easily understood.  It might even be better in the long run.
• Seems to have an active, and growing, community.
• Searching for and adding books is the easiest and fastest of the 3 services reviewed here.   Searches
• Has built-in integration with Twitter, in addition to Facebook, Myspace, and Bebo.
• Widgets!  They aren’t customizable, but all the code is provided.  Simply copy and paste.
• Allows you to link your books to Amazon with a referral code so you can make some bank.
• Has a unique authors and sellers program, that I haven’t really explored yet.
• Completely free.

Cons:

• Still can’t compete with the sheer number of people that seem to be using LibraryThing.  I guess you have to decide how big of a crowd you want to be a part of.
• Widgets for your site are not customizable, and the better options are Flash, which kind of sucks.
• You still have to go to a separate details page to choose the correct edition of your book if it’s different from the one pulled up in the search.
• English only as far as I can tell.
• AdSense ads abound in your members area.  Hey, have to pay the bills somehow, right?

Conclusion

In the midst of doing the research for this article, I was accused of being “a designer, rather than a librarian, bibliophile, author, reviewer, and/or community member”.  I guess I have to plead guilty to half those counts, but I am a bibliophile (in my own right), an author, a review, and a community member (if just a lowly troll).  However, this particular sentiment was voiced from a proponent of LibraryThing when I had initially declared that Shelfari was much better, and I get the point of his jibe.  If you’re looking for a vast community of other book-nerds (a good portion of them probably academics) then LibraryThing is the obvious choice.

But, if you’re like me and enjoy books on a more recreational level, and simply want to be able to catalog your books to keep track of them and display them on your site…I’m going to have to say that Shelfari or Goodreads are much better services.  I say this mostly from a usability standpoint, as most of the extraneous features (like the widgets, Amazon referral codes, etc) are the same across the 3 services.  I personally have decided to throw my hat in the ring for Goodreads.  It was easy to use, fast, and had all the features I needed plus a vibrant community should I magically discover extra time in my day for such pursuits.  I would invite anyone searching for their ideal book catalog service/community to post a comment and let everyone know which service you use, and why you use it.  Perhaps there is some undiscovered gem floating around out there.

Image credit: 11010010