Library Thing

[llcoolvad]

Well! This is a pretty cool idea, something I've been sort of passively hoping that someone would create for quite a while now. It appeals deeply to my librarian soul and merges nicely with my lazy-ass self.

It basically allows you to enter in title and author (or even just one or the other) of books and it'll do all the tedious stuff like find publisher and edition and blah blah. The nice part is that it isn't just reliant on Amazon.com -- it also uses Library of Congress data, so your average out-of-print title will still be found. Click on the library card at the end of any record to see the data it pulls. Cool! And $10 for lifetime membership? Even if it went out of business I could download all that data, save hours upon hours of typing, and export it to spreadsheet! That's totally worth $10.

Before I moved into storage I created the most rudimentary of spreadsheets of all of my books; just title, author, and format (i.e., hard cover, trade, PB, outsize) -- and I did it mostly because I didn't want to wonder for three years if I owned this book or that book already. I then downloaded it into my Treo and figured I was all set for random book sales and the like -- save me from myself. But this might be the bigger solution I've often hoped for.

I just wrote to the guy at Library Thing to see if he'd add the ability to import data via spreadsheet, since that is what I have already. I don't really want to copy>paste 2,500 times to get my stuff in there. Once I build my library I'll link to it here. Maybe!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The creator says "you can export as CSV to Excel" in a comment to someone's blog. (If you read those "dozens of raves" and click on the names, you can see the web pages where the raves came from.)

I don't know what that means, or even what "CSV" means, but maybe you do.

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

Yes, look under the "Extras" tab. It's way cool.

[llcoolvad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that part, but that is "Export" and not "Import". Alas, I got email back from him:
Does your list have ISBNs? LibraryThing works by querying Amazon and
the Library of Congress. Title and author isn't going to result in
one result for each book. Although I might make sure an import
eventually, I don't think I'll do so soon. Most people's databases
have ISBNs.

If all you have is title and author, I suggest you create a
calculation field where you separate them with a coma (see directions
on getting LC books), and then enter it into LT book by book. That's
about the best i can do.

Thanks,
Tim
so because I didn't make the ISBN part of my very quick'n'dirty spreadsheet I am out of luck and will have to enter each one by hand. I still might do it. It only took me a couple of evenings to do the first one... but thanks!

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

http://my.linkbaton.com/isbn/

This will give you the ISBN for just about any title with just the title and/or author. It's quick. You'd have to do it one title at a time, but that would just be a cut 'n' paste job. A possibility, perhaps?