Tuesday Thingers: Because I'm Bored

Ok, I should probably be vacuuming before my mom's friends (including a couple mutual ones) get here for her Tuesday knitting circle. Instead, because I haven't been at this for a while, I'm going to do this week's Tuesday Thinger, followed by one or two old ones.

Have you explored the new Collections feature? Do you plan to use the new Collections? Are you going to add any special collections? If so, what are they?

I'll admit it, I've been waiting for Collections functionality ever since I joined and heard rumors about it, sometime back in 06 or 07 if memory serves. I don't plan to use them, I use them, all the preconfigured ones, as well as a couple I made myself. With the advent of collections I took my "Religion & Spirituality Library" tag and converted it into a collection. Its sort of the focus of my whole collection, so I thought it deserved its own. Someone's probably achieved more complete collection of this sort of literature, but mine is still growing, and it is rather specialized. I also created a collection for all the books I read last year, and for the ones I'm reading this year. I've considered converting my fiction and non-fiction tags to collections, but I'm a bit on the fence about it.

What other weekly memes or round robins do you participate in? Is this the only one? Why Tuesday Thingers and not some other weekly Tuesday meme? Or do you do more than one?

In addition to Tuesday Thingers, I do the Sunday Salon, Booking Through Thursday, and am planning to add Musing Mondays to the list. If anyone knows of a weekly meme for Wednesday let me know at romartin at linfield dot edu. I got into Tuesday Thinger because it was started at Librarything, which I absolutely love, and is quite honestly an avid reader/bibliophile's dream come true in some ways

Cataloging sources. What cataloging sources do you use most? Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources, or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most things through LT’s almost 700 sources?

I try to use the Library of Congress as much as I can. No reason really, just my own little idiosyncratic habit i guess. When I can't find records for a book in the LoC I usually use amazon.com

Sorry for the weird formatting on this post. Just getting back into the groove and finding I have to relearn some of this stuff.

Tuesday Thingers

Today's topic: Book-swapping. Do you do it? What site(s) do you use? How did you find out about them? What do you think of them? Do you use LT's book-swapping column feature for information on what to swap? Do you participate in any of the LT communities that discuss bookswapping, like the Bookmooch group for example?

I used both Bookmooch and Paperback Swap for a while. I found them both easy to use, and, seeing as I'm still in school anything I can get for free or nearly so is always good. I haven't used either in a while because at this point I've got over a hundred books on my TBR pile, and its still growing. If I can ever get it down below 100 I may start using bookmooch or PBS again. I'm also not a member of any mooch groups on LT. Strangely enough, I got into bookmooch and PBS through www.bookcrossing.com, I site similar to mooching, except instead of mailing a book to someone, you register the book with the site, stick a special bookplate in it, and leave it somewhere in a public place for someone to find.

Tuesday Thingers!

Why LT?

Why did you choose to open and maintain an LT account? Do you/did you use other online cataloging/social networking sites, like GoodReads or Shelfari? Do you use more than one? Are they different or do they serve different purposes?

I pretty much stumbled on LT one day, and thinking, "This looks awesome" immediately signed up and started cataloguing my library. I hadn't heard of cataloguing sites before LT, and, from what I've seen of some of the others, I seem to have stumbled on the best one. GoodReads, which seems to be the next best thing to LT, also looks like a blatant copy. Although I'm on facebook, LT is the only book cataloguing/social networking site I use. I just never saw the need to use more than one site that did the same thing, which I guess is why I only use facebook, even though I also have a myspace account.

Tuesday Thinger

So the question this week is- how many books do you have cataloged in your LibraryThing account? How do you decide what to include- everything you have, everything you've read- and are there things you leave off?

I currently have 323 books in my catalog. My only real criterion is that I own the book. I've got books I've already read in there, books I plan to read. I've even got a couple I know I'm never actually going to crack open, like a copy of the DSM-IV I got from a book sale at my college library for free just so I could see the look on people's faces when they see it on my shelf.

Sunday Thinger

Normally this will get posted on Tuesdays, but its Sunday today, hence the modified title line. Anyway, this is a weekly meme created by one of the wonderful people over on LibraryThing.

This week's topic: Discussion groups. Do you belong to any (besides Early Reviewers)? Approximately how many? Are there any in particular that you participate in more avidly? How often do you check?

LibraryThing is part book cataloging site, and part massive world spanning discussion forum. Within this most wonderful of sites I'm a member of about 20 discussion groups. However, of those I only check about five at all regularly. Those include the Green Dragon, the most active group on LT, which focuses on Tolkein's work, as well as fantasy/mythology/wonderful randomness.