Samuel Pepys, the English naval administrator and member of Parliament in 17th century, stated that the true English gentleman should have at least 3,000 books in his own library.
Charles Eliot, President of Harvard University in 1909, said that the essential books of a good library are: the Holy Bible, a good Dictionary, an atlas and the entire collection of Shakespeare's plays.
If you are interested in statements like that, and above all if you have always wanted to catalogue your books, but it's always been too hard, too time consuming, now, you only have to do one thing: join a social networking site targeted at worldwide booklovers!
The two most famous sites of this kind on the Web are
aNobii and
LibraryThing.
Thanks to these cataloguing web applications, you can list your books, find new titles, share your thoughts and, most important of all, meet people who love books!
The idea behind them is very simple: to create a digital platform where people can store books, share reviews and suggestions and meet other readers with similar-tastes. As a matter of fact, both
aNobii and
LibraryThing make it possible for readers to upload the books they own, to provide personal comments and remarks and to interact with other readers according to their literary interests.
LibraryThing helps people to create a library-quality catalogue of their books and connects people based on the books they share. To join the community, all you have to do is enter your username and password, and it's done! Even adding books to a list is simple: just enter some words for the title, or the author or the ISBN code. The site gets all the necessary data from Amazon.com and over 690 libraries around the world, including the
Library of Congress. Once the book(s) is (are) added, you can look at your catalogue either by clicking on "list" or on "cover", and search for books, sort your books and apply "tags" to the covers.
You can even rate your books and write reviews. As a user of LibraryThing, you get a profile which connects you to everyone on the site. You can tell people all about yourself and, of course, about your library. But if you prefer, you can keep it completely private. The system has got over 435,000 users all over the world and 28 million books. Everyone can create and join groups of people or even make a private group for friends. And they can talk in the forum system or join in the blog. A useful service offered by LibraryThing is LibraryThing Local, a sort of gateway to many local bookstores, libraries and book events (fairs and festivals), that gives information concerning the world of books in the local areas pertinent to the users.
aNobii was launched in August 2005, the same month, same year when LibraryThing was developed. Originally based in Hong Kong it soon grew beyond its borders and now is translated into many different languages. At the present time it is probably one of most visited online
booksharing communities. Its name comes from the first few syllables of
Anobium Punctatum, the proper name for bookworms, which is also the name for the common furniture beetle.
aNobii allows you to add books to your shelves by either entering the ISBN code or the book title. You can also import book lists from your
LibraryThing account, Amazon account, Excel Spreadsheet or a list from anywhere. You can add details to the books on your shelves (such as the date or place you got them), write comments about them or make margin notes on each page, which is quite useful when the books are used as references. Besides aNobii users can easily explore others' shelves and add the books they want to read to their wish lists and if you find a person with books you like, you can keep track of their shelf onsite, via RSS or even by email. Furthermore users can trade, swap or lend out books they own. For every book you are willing to trade, you can set a price or a note to a willing participant. You can also enter details of the transaction such as to whom the book is lent and when you want it back. You can buy books online by following the links to Amazon.com as well.
The main difference between aNobii and LibraryThing is that the first is completely free while LibraryThing only allows you free membership to join the community and enter the first 200 titles, but if you want to add more books you have to pay $10 (year) or $25 (life).
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