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ACROSS MY DESK: LibraryThing.com
DearREADERS,
From the 10 April 2006 Ancestry Weekly Journal, edited by Juliana Szucs Smith we
read about a service to assist you in cataloging the books in your personal
library using an online service
www.librarything.com described by Marnie Oakes under the category "quick
tips." This service is a lot less expensive than programs which reside on your
PC, and are also subject to hard disc failure, etc.
Here's what Marnie had to say:
"While you are spring cleaning you can catalog your library.
At LibraryThing.com you establish an account and begin adding titles by
searching for the ISBN or the author/title. LibraryThing goes out to 47+
libraries including the Library of Congress to retrieve a catalog record for
your title. If the search shows no result, you can add the information yourself.
Each book can be "tagged" with multiple tags of your choice. It could be family
surname, location in your office/home, or subject or all three.
Cataloging for the first 200 books is free. Beyond 200 the charge is $10 a year
or $25 for life. Having an online catalog of your own holdings, that can be
downloaded to an Excel spreadsheet, is good for insurance purposes, shopping,
research and LibraryThing's prime purpose, finding people who own the same books
you do (although you may keep your collection private). Imagine the
possibilities for genealogy. Have a look, but beware, you will be hooked!"
SUMMARY:
Ol' Myrt here feels one must consider this LibraryThing.com service as an
insurance option at the very least. This sort of thing would also serve to
coordinate purchasing for your local Family History Center or genealogy society
library. My research friends Audrey, Barb and I looked for something similar
several years ago, to safeguard against unnecessarily purchasing a book that one
of the others has in her personal library. Having one Library.com account with
access by all three, including designations as to which of the three owned each
book would solve our problem. The listing of our genealogy books, CDs and tapes
would also be immediately updated and easily viewed when another member of the
group signs on to LibraryThing.com, sparing us the aggravation of merging three
excel worksheets on a periodic basis to keep everyone informed.
SOURCE CITATION NOTE:
The Ancestry.com website is apparently behind in uploading articles from the
Ancestry Weekly Journal. Pages reviewed 4/23/2006 still call the newsletter the
Ancestry Daily News, and there was no mention of this quick tip which came out
in the 10 April 2006 Ancestry Weekly Journal. My subsequent Ancestry.com library
search for the exact words "Marnie Oakes" and also "Librarything.com" (without
quote marks) returned no relevant hits. Since Ol' Myrt could not provide a link
to the above referenced quick-tip, which I received via email, I am forced to
merely assure my readers of my source, and give credit to Marnie Oakes for the
input about www.LibraryThing.com
I much prefer to partially quote an individual, and
provide a link to details for my interested readers.
Happy family tree climbing!
Myrt :)
DearMYRTLE,
Your friend in genealogy.
www.DearMYRTLE.com
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