Cataloguing books – any suggestions?

Posted on August 13, 2006 by Neha Viswanathan

I am looking for a nice clean way to catalogue books I’ve read and own. I really like Library Thing, but the limit of 200 titles for free accounts is really too low. I’d have run though just half of one stack at the end of it. For some reason, I never really liked All Consuming. Any suggetions? I really want to look for something that has a nifty code that can be entered in the sidebar of the blog.

About Neha Viswanathan

Neha Viswanathan. City-hopping, trivia-gathering, identity-hunting. Obsessions include culture, social software, cities, literature, internet, music, history, marketplace and anything that doesn't twinkle.
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10 Responses to Cataloguing books – any suggestions?

  1. bhupinder singh says:
    August 13, 2006 at 3:38 pm

    I maintain my list in bibliophil.org.

    Bibliophil.org is rather unpretentious in its interface, but have almost all capabilities that one would like to have- export and import files, rating, mark as read/unread/incomplete and a lot more. In other words, while it is feature rich, its user interface is disappointing. Otherwise, it is very easy to use.

    So I use LibraryThing for the user interface (for putting that “nifty” code) by exporting the list to a CSV file from Bibliophil and then importing it to Librarything.

    Of course, it means some regular housekeeping to be done to sync up the two.

    All Consuming does not have an import feature.

  2. sonia says:
    August 13, 2006 at 8:00 pm

    Alphabetize? :)

    This isn’t quite what you asked for, but here’s another really cool website for book people.

    http://bookmooch.com/

  3. Anon2 says:
    August 14, 2006 at 3:24 am

    http://www.douban.net/ is another thing you can take a look at. I think you can put a little thingy on your sidebar. That said if you can shell out 10 Rani Elizabeths for a Bollywood fillum, why not 25 Jeffersons/Abe Lincolns for Library Thing?! :D

  4. Neha Viswanathan says:
    August 14, 2006 at 8:00 am

    bhupinder singh: Thanks for that. Will check – though I would never have the patience to update and synchronise the two I think.

    Sonia: oooh! We like. But I am a horrible person – I refuse to part from my books.

    Anon2: Well, I don’t think the database takes that much of server space actually – if it comes to that I’d rather look for something that I can install on my own server. That said – if library thing allowed for about 1000 entires for free accounts – I could experiment a lot more and then decide – 200 is just too low. Oh, and thanks for Douban!

  5. Amit Agarwal says:
    August 14, 2006 at 12:48 pm

    I am sure you would know Reader 2 but just in case – http://reader2.com/

    They also let you embed your reading list into the blog.

  6. Jace says:
    August 15, 2006 at 6:24 pm

    Another vote for Douban.net. It’s got a sweet, no frills interface that does the job, plus the option of embedding within your site.

    5 points for being a Chinese-made website. Chinese app sites with English translations are rare enough.

  7. Neha Viswanathan says:
    August 16, 2006 at 6:17 pm

    Amit Agarwal: Thanks for this. Hadn’t heard of Reader2 actually.

    Jace: Thanks. Another reason to consider Douban.net then.

  8. Asif Iqbal says:
    August 20, 2006 at 8:35 pm

    Hey Neha, check out listal. It’s quite good at cataloging. It has five categories – Movies, DVD, Books, Music and Games. And I don’t think there’s a limit or something. Plus, you can post the collection on your blog too.

    It’s really cool. Check it out – http://www.listal.com/

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