Geeks like books and we want our kids to like books. If you are obsessive like me, you have the urge to catalog those books. Or maybe, in this age of online information consumption, you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to read more books this year. Or maybe you want a place where the grandparents can see what books the kids have so you don’t end up with multiple copies of The Cat in the Hat.
There are are several online tools that can help you out. GoodReads, LibraryThing and Shelfari each allow you to catalog your books online and interact with other readers.
I have been an avid user of LibraryThing since 2008. I started using it to catalog my book collection while home on paternity leave. I chose LibraryThing because it allowed me to manually enter books that were not on the site. (Back in 2008, the GoodReads and Shelfari libraries were limited to books listed on Amazon.com and I have about 200 vintage books that are not listed on Amazon.) I have happily been using LibraryThing, with over 1,200 books in my online catalog. LibraryThing has been good to me, so I am hesitant to move. I have also received some books for free through their early reviewer program.
I’m trying read more books this year so I thought it would be a good time to look back at these three sites and evaluate them again.
Organization
My number one priority is cataloging and organizing my books. I want to track the books I’ve read and the books I own in one place. I take advantage of my local library, so I don’t own all of the books I have read. Conversely, I have not read all of the books I own.
LibraryThing is the clear winner when it comes to organization because of the many ways it allows you to organize your books. LibraryThing uses “collections” as the first level of organization. All of the books are in “Your Library” and then you can add more collections. Since the collections are not exclusive, books can be in multiple collections. My collections are Currently reading, Publisher provided, Reviewed, Read but unowned, To read and Read in 2010. LibraryThing also allows for extensive use of tags so you can organize within a collection and across collections.
Instead of collections, Goodreads uses “shelves.” I have Currently reading, To-read, Borrowed, Publisher Provided and Read in 2010. You can create you own shelves. For some reason, the ownership status setting for a book is separate from the shelves. There is no tagging.
Shelfari has six “shelves”: Plan to read, Reading, Read, Own, Favorites and Wish list. You can’t add more shelves, but you can use tags to organize your books.
Import and Export
The import/export feature is only useful if you already have a book collection in an existing database and want to move it to one of these sites or if you want to move from one site to another. All three have the ability to import and export books from a spreadsheet. So I exported my collection from LibraryThing to each of Shelfari and GoodReads, expecting my vintage book collection not to make it through the import process.
I was right. GoodReads and Shelfari failed to recognize most of those vintage books. I ended up with 1082 books in Shelfari after manually adding 100 or so books. The import to Goodreads resulted in 967 books, but I did not manually add any books.
User Interface
When I originally evaluated these sites in 2008, Shelfari had the best visuals. Unfortunately, it looks like Shelfari has been frozen in time. The site still shows the book covers sitting on a wood grain bookshelf which was an interesting approach two years ago, but now looks dated. It also shows the least amount of information about the books.
LibraryThing is the least attractive of the three. It seems to have focused on providing a user interface full of information. I found it the easiest to use, but I had the most familiarity with it.
I think GoodReads has the best looking user interface of the three. It has a simple color scheme and straight-forward graphics and icons.
Mobile View
All three have a stripped down mobile view of their sites that worked great on my iPhone. Of the three, GoodReads has the most functionality squeezed onto the small iPhone screen, while still being readable. LibraryThing announced a new LibraryThing Anywhere, but they haven’t released it yet.
Community
All three sites have an active community of users sharing information about books. Each has lots of forums and groups to narrow the discussions to discrete topics.
All three allow you to import your contacts to see if anyone you know is also using the site and create a connection with them. All three allow you to import a list of email addresses to find connections. GoodReads can also find connections through Facebook and Twitter. I have very few connections on the sites. Lots of connections on one would be a good reason to select one site over another. An online community is a reason to use one of these sites instead of a desktop database.
GoodReads labels itself as the “social network for readers.” So its approach is much more like FaceBook for books than LibraryThing or Shelfari. With LibraryThing, the emphasis is on your catalog. GoodReads emphasizes updates from your connections. The GoodReads home page is like the Facebook home page, with the updates from your connections front and center.
Integration with Other Application
Goodreads has a nice integration with Twitter and Facebook allowing you to send book updates to those sites. LibraryThing and Shelfari both have Facebook applications but they are far behind GoodReads.
Widgets
All three sites have widgets that allow you to show part of your collection on your own website or blog. LibraryThing has the widest assortment of widgets and a robust ability to customize those widgets. The other two sites are much more limited in what you can display. You can see a LibraryThing widget below that displays the books I have read so far in 2010, customized with the colors from the GeekDad banner.
Cost
All three sites are free. LibraryThing requires you to buy a membership if you want to have more than 250 books in your catalog. They have a yearly membership rate and lifetime membership rate. I bought the $25 lifetime membership. GoodReads display advertisements and “featured books.” Shelfari also displays advertisements and has financial backing from its parent, Amazon.com.
Results
After working with all three sites for the past month, I concluded that LibraryThing is the best site of the three for maintaining and organizing your book collection. GoodReads is close second if you want to share your reading habits with your friends. Shelfari is a distant third.
No, print is not dead. As GeekDad Editor Emeritus, Chris Anderson, wrote in Free:
“For all their cost disadvantages, dead trees smeared into sheets still have excellent battery life, screen resolution, and portability, to say nothing about looking lovely on shelves.”
As for me, I’m going to continue with LibraryThing as my primary catalog. I also like GoodReads so I’m going to duplicate my reading efforts going forward with GoodReads, but not bother to go back and fill in the blanks. If you are using either site, let me know your thoughts and connect with me.
