A few weeks ago, a friend told me about it and … ADDICTION! I cannot express how much I love this thing. I happen to have an iPhone with a barcode scanning app so getting the books up to Librarything was a breeze. For the antique, out of print books, that can’t be scanned, you can add them easily as they all seem to be in their giant database.

Why catalogue all your books? Well, my number one reason is because you can. But, also, you can tag them by category for easy lookups, avoid buying the same book twice (yes, you’ve done that), and check out statistics like how many of your books have won awards, how many originated in French, how many others own the book (and what they also own that you might like). There is even a button called the Unsuggester to show you what you will never want to read.

In essence, you get to play librarian without having to wear a cardigan. Not that there is anything wrong with cardigans.