You LibraryThing You
December 29th 2007 07:04
For better or worse, or maybe because I just can’t help myself, I joined up with yet another site on the Net the other night, mainly to see what it would do in a particular area I’d heard about.
My son had contacted me about this site about a year ago, and it was only when his email happened to come up again in connection with a different search altogether, that I paid any real attention to it.
The site is LibraryThing, and primarily it’s a place for databasing your personal library – I used it slightly differently, to list the books I’ve read in the last few months.
Each book you list connects you with all the other people who’ve listed that title, and you can see how popular books are, what sort of people read them and so on. (Haven’t got into that part yet as I’m less into social stuff than just filling in forms!)
However, the fun idea that my son told me about was UnSuggester, which is on this site. When you put in a particular book you enjoy into the first box in the UnSuggester section, LibraryThing analyzes the seven million books its members have recorded as owned or read, and comes back with books least likely to share a library with the book you suggest. Seems a bit of a weird idea, but then it’s often these off-the-wall things that are most fun on the Net.
I gave it a try, putting in one of the Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus novels, A Question of Blood. The UnSuggester came up with something I'd never heard of The doctrine of abstinence from blood defended. In answer to two pamphlets. Hmmm.
And one other section that's especially interesting is labelled, Zeitgeist. This is a vital statistics area, in which things like the 50 largest libraries on LibraryThing are listed, along with the 50 most prolific reviewers and the 25 most reviewed books, (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows take top place at present). The seven Harry Potter titles are also top of the top books - though curiously 1984 is number nine. There is a list of the 25 top books by star rating, which varies from day to day of course, but which the other day included a number of obscure Christian titles. These have now gone, and The Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns and something called Codex Seraphinianus are in place.
The 50 top rated authors, and the 50 least-rated authors aren't at all the well-known names you'd expect - at least not today - but the top authors (who are a different bunch) include many established names.
And these are only a few of the stats!
My son had contacted me about this site about a year ago, and it was only when his email happened to come up again in connection with a different search altogether, that I paid any real attention to it.
The site is LibraryThing, and primarily it’s a place for databasing your personal library – I used it slightly differently, to list the books I’ve read in the last few months.
Each book you list connects you with all the other people who’ve listed that title, and you can see how popular books are, what sort of people read them and so on. (Haven’t got into that part yet as I’m less into social stuff than just filling in forms!)
However, the fun idea that my son told me about was UnSuggester, which is on this site. When you put in a particular book you enjoy into the first box in the UnSuggester section, LibraryThing analyzes the seven million books its members have recorded as owned or read, and comes back with books least likely to share a library with the book you suggest. Seems a bit of a weird idea, but then it’s often these off-the-wall things that are most fun on the Net.
I gave it a try, putting in one of the Ian Rankin Inspector Rebus novels, A Question of Blood. The UnSuggester came up with something I'd never heard of The doctrine of abstinence from blood defended. In answer to two pamphlets. Hmmm.
And one other section that's especially interesting is labelled, Zeitgeist. This is a vital statistics area, in which things like the 50 largest libraries on LibraryThing are listed, along with the 50 most prolific reviewers and the 25 most reviewed books, (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows take top place at present). The seven Harry Potter titles are also top of the top books - though curiously 1984 is number nine. There is a list of the 25 top books by star rating, which varies from day to day of course, but which the other day included a number of obscure Christian titles. These have now gone, and The Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns and something called Codex Seraphinianus are in place.
The 50 top rated authors, and the 50 least-rated authors aren't at all the well-known names you'd expect - at least not today - but the top authors (who are a different bunch) include many established names.
And these are only a few of the stats!
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