ibrary thing is a way to organize your books and share them with others. I've known about it for a while, but never felt like it was something I had any need for. For personal use, it seems to be more for people who own a lot of books, or are looking for social recommendations. I think it really shines as a tool for small libraries to get cataloged, to get some kinda tiny PAC. My friend uses it for that purpose, for her library: Paper Fort.
Paper Fort is a fledgling zine library that already has about 550 titles cataloged, and hundreds more to do. Right now the collection will be displayed at Rhino's but the lady who runs it, Sparky, has been looking for a permanent space to house it. It's going to be really sweet to see it all sorted and displayed.
She uses LibraryThing in the way that makes sense to me. It seems like a powerful PAC replacer, and for small libraries could be invaluable. But it doesn't have to replace a catalog, it could be used to add additional functionally to a system; I think we could benefit from using LibraryThing.
One of the great things about LibraryThing, is the sheer number of tags on each item. It is another way to search and find what you are looking for. Tags are great because the people who actually used the system, and the items, put in words or phrases that they thought were good descriptors of the book. You don't have to rely on one person's, or a group of people's opinion on what the book is, one person doesn't have to decide where it gets classified, but that decisions is made as a group, a shared decision about what it is, and what else is like it.
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