Social This and Social That

In libraryland, much talk is surrounded around the word "social". Social software, social book catalogs, social blog, social wiki's and even social librarians. Stephen Leary's Reflective Librarian blog has an interesting comparison of the social book catalogs- aka Library Thing- as an example.


I was originally planning on taking my books and using LibraryThing to "catalog" my personal collections of books. But, I decided on a slightly different angle and have used Swaptree to track my books. Swaptree is a trading site. You enter your books, CD's and DVD's and if someone wants what you have you can trade it- but it doesn't have to be a lateral trade. Got it? So if you want my Janet Jackson CD, you can ask for it. But, I don't need to get or trade anything from you.

LibraryThing is more a cataloging system of sorts. Your own personal library collection. It's social aspect is so popular. There is a good deal of interaction between users- whether blogs or personal reviews of books, etc. Literally social- no pun intended.

Years ago, when I first started working in libraryland, I collected so many books that were being trashed by the library. I also had the good fortune of working in the field of publishing- so I had access to books-a-million. My Park Slope apartment had floor to ceiling book cases- the kind that some would die for. Eventually, I chose to move and I couldn't take the shelves full of books. I couldn't very well donate them to the library since I had taken most of them from the library- many first editions. I decided to take as many as I could to the Strand Bookstore and sell them and also to a now non-existent bookshop in Park Slope. To my surprise, I did rather well on the book sale.

Now that social book catalogs such as LibraryThing have come along, it would be great to enter my books. However, I don't have any books to catalog or those that I do have, I have already entered into Swaptree. Plus, the work is somewhat tedious. Time has to be set aside for entering each book's ISBN number into the database.

I suppose after I have entered my books into one of the social book catalogs, I can then socialize with other social librarians and go out and do come social drinking...Starbucks of course.