What exactly does librarything do?

[Faithr]

I just read the thread about Plaid Dad's librarything on his blog. So I went to the website to check it out. Maybe cuz I'm sick and my brain is fuzzy I was kind of puzzled. What exactly does librarything do for one? It sounds really onerous to enter all that info about one's books into it and to what purpose? I must be missing something. I have thousands of books. I am really compulsive about it and need to cut down and give away lots of them. Would library thing really help me get organized about my books or would it just add to the chore of sorting and winnowing?

[pmegan]

Depends. I have a few thousand books too (for a while I was in the top 10 on their website! But that was ages ago, before so many used bookstores joined up) but I like it as a record of what I have and what I've read. It took a few months of entering slowly to get it all in there, but I have a cheap barcode scanner which made things go MUCH quicker.

[melhouse]

I don't have as many books as you - just @ 1200. It keeps me from buying duplicate books. You can also categorize your books: SOTW I, for instance for all of the books that I used with it.

I don't have the scanner thing, I just entered ISBN #s. It did take a while, but I took my time.

HTH,
Melissa

[Plaid Dad]

I use it to keep a running inventory of our books for insurance purposes. There's also a fun social aspect to the site - seeing who shares your tastes and interests. Some people with large libraries use it to make sure they don't buy duplicates of books they already own.

I'm not sure if it would help anyone get organized. To get your books logged you'd have to be pretty organized in the first place. But if you had already committed to going through your collection and culling books for sale, then it might give you a system for doing that.

[Jenny in Atl]

I love Library Thing... it keeps me from buying duplicates. We have so many bks, I often forget if I already own something or had just checked it out of the library. It's great when I go to used bk sales, Scholastic warehouse sales, etc.

[nmoira]

I use it to:

1. Keep books sorted and tagged so I can pull them out for homeschooling (I'm still in the process of tagging).

2. Keep from buying duplicates (DH can access it with his phone when we're out and about)

3. I wish I could say insurance, but most of our books aren't yet entered. We started with the children's books.

[WTMCassandra]

I've been vacillating for a long time on LibraryThing for this very reason. I've tried to keep an ad-hoc inventory of at least my HSing books for years, but I sometimes make mistakes.

This thread caused me to search for barcode scanners that would work with my MacBook and save me time, and then I found this!

Has anyone tried this: Delicious Monster (http://www.delicious-monster.com/)?

If this works the way it says, it would be WAY COOL. And since I already have a webcam built in, I wouldn't need to buy any equipment. Is this too good to be true?