I am starting a week late for the Tuesday posts on the LibraryThing blog ring, but here we go! The subject for this blog post was determined over at The Boston Bibliophile's blog.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?
Hmm- this is a question that I think many LTers grapple with in setting up their accounts. I currently have 674 books cataloged in my account. I include everything that I have (I think- there might be stuff at my parents' house that I'm missing) and everything I've read. Everything that I've read but do not own, I mark as "Not Owned." Clever, right? :-) Everything that I own but have not read I mark as "TBR." I do not put books in my library that I do not own and have not read (i.e., I do not have a "wish list" label).
Since I used to be pretty active over at PBS, I used to update any books that I traded away with the "not owned" tag. But I don't really trade so much any more, and so I might have become lazy in marking books that I don't own- in which case, my library may seem bigger than it really is. I personally think owning 674 books is pretty impressive, but not when I compare that to how many other people have. How can they catalog over 1,000 books?! I think when I first started, I probably had about 500 that I cataloged, and THAT was a pain to do, for sure. But it's SOOO convenient to have them all in one place. And to have them properly labeled, too (that was also a pain to do).
I also include books that I started but did not finish, whether I own them or not. This is more for my personal preference than anything else, just in case I don't think I'll like the author again if I were to come across the book later.
Hi Aarti, nice to see you here! I agree that tagging everything is a pain. I need to update all of my tags because they are pretty much listed as the year I have read the book. That sounds like a good winter project for next year!
ReplyDeleteLol it did take forever to add all of mine, but the Cuecat really came in handy, and it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would. Tagging took awhile, and it's still not exactly the way I want it!
ReplyDeleteI tag, in fact I'm a bit of a freak where tagging is concerned. I try to do it as I input a book though I've been known to go back and tweak my tag cloud on a few occasions.
ReplyDeleteUm... not only did I catalogue my over 2000 books, I actually *enjoyed* the process... and I LOVE sorting through my tags!
ReplyDeleteI've barely put any of my books on LT and the tagging eludes me.
ReplyDeleteI do have to say that keeping track of what I've read has been pretty entertaining.
I only log books I own (read or unread) in LibraryThing with maybe two exceptions. I forgot about those until just now. :-) I have reviews of those books up on LibraryThing, but I gave the books away and didn't want to lose the reviews.
ReplyDelete