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I like books and I want my kids to like books. If you are obsessive like me, you may 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 and want to track what you've read. 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. Or maybe you want to share your reading habits with your friends.
I explored six sites designed to help you track your book reading and ownership:
I have been an avid user of LibraryThing since 2008. I have happily been using LibraryThing, with over 1,400 books in my online catalog.
I've also been actively using GoodReads. It's more like Facebook for books. Its focus is the social interaction component, allowing you to follow the reading progress and reviews of your connections.
Libib asked me to take a look at their site because of my three-year-old look at ways to Catalog Your Books Online. The GeekMoms pointed out Bookish. I also took a look at Readernaut because it was recommended in the comments from the old story.
Organization
My number one priority was 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 main collections are My Library, Currently reading, Publisher provided, Kindle, To read, Read in 2010, Read in 2011, Read in 2012, and the newest Read in 2013. LibraryThing also allows for extensive use of tags so you can organize within a collection and across collections.
Instead of collections, Goodreads uses "shelves." My main shelves are Currently reading, To-read, Borrowed, Publisher Provided, Read in 2010, Read in 2011, Read in 2012, and Read in 2013. You can create your 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.
Bookish only has two choices: Books I've Read or Books I Want to Read. It took me a while to figure out how to add a book to the Books I've Read category. You need to rate it. To be fair, Bookish is focused on giving you recommendation for books to read. It does not allow you to add books that are not part of its catalog. And its catalog is surprisingly thin. I tried adding Robert Ellis's The Dead Room and it was not part of the catalog. I also discovered that Bookish didn't bother to differentiate between authors with the same name. So books by Robert Ellis, the crime novelist, are lumped together with Robert Ellis, the math book writer.
Readernaut has two choices: Reading or Finished.
Libib allows you to have three separate libraries and allows tagging of books. The site also allows you catalog DVDs in addition to books.
Community and Sharing
Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing each have an active community of users sharing information about books. Each has lots of forums and groups to narrow the discussions to discrete topics.
Those three allow you to import your contacts to see if anyone you know is also using the site and create a connection with them. You can also find connections through Facebook and Twitter. An online community and sharing of your books 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 the others. The GoodReads home page shows the updates from your connections front and center.
Bookish, Readernaut, and Libib have no meaningful community interaction or sharing.
User Interface
When I first evaluated book 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 seems stuck in 1999. It seems to have focused on providing a user interface full of information, rather than good looks.
GoodReads has the best looking user interface. It has a simple color scheme and straightforward graphics and icons.
Readernaut is a bare bones screen. Bookish hits you hard with ads. Libib gives you the choice to show lots of information about the book or merely the title, with no happy medium.
Terms of Service
One concern you may have it what are these sites doing with your information and your reviews. Personally, I'm not that concerned with the sharing of reviews. I stand behind what I say. If I think an author may be offended by what I say, I may just leave the review blank.
Goodreads requires you to grant them a license to use your user-generated content. Any personal information or content that you voluntarily disclose for posting to Goodreads becomes available to the public and to GoodReads business partners. They do syndicate their reviews, I assume for a fee. For authors, you can grab some of the reviews for your own books with a widget. Below are some of the GoodRead's reviews for GeekDad John Booth's book Collect all 21!.
Goodreads reviews for Collect all 21!
Like GoodReads, Shelfari requires you to grant them a license to use your user-generated content. Any personal information or content that you voluntarily disclose for posting to Shelfari becomes available to the public and to Shelfari business partners.
LibraryThing also can sell your reviews to commercial and non-commercial sites. But you can control that on your account settings.
Readernaut seems to have not bothered with a terms of service.
Libib does not address their ability to resell your user-generated content.
Cost
All of the sites are free, but 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 displays advertisements and "featured books." Shelfari also displays advertisements and has financial backing from its parent, Amazon.com. Bookish has lots of ads. Readernaut and Libib don't have ads, but Libib adds its Amazon affiliate code when you click to purchase a book.
Results
After working with these site, I concluded that LibraryThing is the best site for maintaining and organizing your book collection. GoodReads is the best site for sharing your reading habits. The others are not worth your time.
As for me, I’m continuing to duplicate my efforts. I use LibraryThing as the primary catalog for my books. I use GoodReads to share my reading habits. If I were to start from scratch, I would pick GoodReads. Its organizational tools are good enough for most people.
If you are using either site, let me know your thoughts and connect with me.
No, print is not dead. As GeekDad Editor Emeritus, Chris Anderson, wrote in Free:
Image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alte_Buecher.JPG
