Week 14: LibraryThing: Still Going Strong

Week 14 of 23 Things Kansas focuses on one of my favorite past-times, LibraryThing.

I joined LibraryThing back on May 08, 2006, expecting to catalog a few books and then loose interest. Why would I want to work at a library for eight hours, then come home and catalog? Well, almost four years later I am still hooked on the site, and I see no reason to stop.

LibraryThing (LT) has changed, advanced, and improved, but they have kept the core (the soul if you will) of the site intact.  At its core LT is still a catalog for your home library.  It does not pretend to be anything but this simple concept, and yet has managed to grow and add new features.

LT's online social networking components are flexible, makes connecting with other users easy, and provides a wealth of data and interactions.  However, the best thing about LT's social networking components is that I can easily ignore them.

Don't want to join any groups? Fine, delete them from your home page.
Don't want comments, reviews, statistics, author talks, or other components? Fine, delete them.

Unlike sites like Facebook, I can just have the elements I want.  For all it's additions (and LibraryThing has added many features) LT has kept the focus on being a library catalog.  It is a site that you can use to customize and store information about your books...and then if you want, you can move on to other things.  It has remained simple, yet powerful, and continues to be one of my favorite Web 2.0 creations.

Feel free to browse my personal catalog through the LibraryThing widget to the right.