Multiple trips to the book fair and bringing home books from my dad's collection has on several occasions left me wondering, "Do I have this book already or did I just see it here last time?" It is getting harder to keep track of what I already own. My wife thinks this is good reason to get rid of the books. I think it is good reason to find a way a better way of cataloging and keeping track of everything so all of the books become useful instead of temporarily forgotten.
I have had to reinstall all the software on my computer far too many times this year to bother with a downloaded program (especially when the most recommended software is completely unfree). In looking around online for the best solution I found four websites that were worth looking at: LibraryThing, Goodreads, aNobii, and Shelfari. Most of the reviews of these sites were at least a year old which is approximately one eon in internet time. So I took a look for myself at how each of these sites are laid out and what they could do for me.
All four of these sites have successfully differentiated themselves from each other and it is no random choice as to which one you will want to use. The comparison most often made is between LibraryThing and Goodreads. I don't think this is the proper comparison anymore, if it ever was. The purpose of these two sites is very different which is probably why so many people don't ever chose and just use both.
The two comparison groups now are LibraryThing vs. Shelfari and Goodreads vs. aNobii. The first two are websites that focus on being a good personal library catalog for all of your books, the second two focus on being a social network for people who read books. This is a big distinction. In the first case, the focus is on organizing all of your books. In the second case, most of the focus is on interacting with other people.
I wrote up excruciatingly detailed descriptions of each one of the sites, but here is a small summary of what I found.
These two options are where you should look if your primary goal is to organize the books you have. Both were able to locate every book I tried to enter. LibraryThing was more flexible in your choices for organizing and labeling the books and it was very accurate in what edition of the book you were allowed to enter. LibraryThing's advantage here is being able to search Library of Congress data to identify the book you own. It is also extremely customizable in what is shown on your home page when you log in, giving you a lot of choice in how to make the site most useful to you. Shelfari is a much prettier site, but also a much simpler site. The options for customization are very limited and there is no way to connect with your facebook or twitter accounts. Shelfari's advantage is its close integration of Amazon.com. It automatically loads into your account every book you have ever bought online from Amazon. If you want a record of your books, including the specific editions owned, and would like to be able to customize your log in page, then LibraryThing is the site you want (and the one I chose). If you bought all or most of your books on Amazon.com and care more about good looks than customization, then Shelfari is likely to be what you will prefer.
These two options are social networks designed for interaction with other people. Neither were able to locate all the books I tried to enter and didn’t handle multiple editions of the same book very well, but they found all of the more recently published books. Goodreads is stuffed full of information and borders on being cluttered, but currently has the better system for interaction of the community. The goal of this site seems to be discussions about what you have read and staying a while to digest what you see. aNobii is a much simpler site, but still has almost all of the functionality of Goodreads. It is not so focused on interactive discussions, but in making the book collections of other people visible to you so that you can find other books you might want to read. Both of these tie in closely with facebook and twitter and provide plenty of options for keeping track of what your friends are reading. The decision between these two sites will likely be down to whether you like a simple interface with no advertisements and a focus on new books you may want to read with aNobii, or do you want interactive discussions about what you are reading and other interactive features like polls and trivia quizzes with Goodreads. Goodreads seems to have been people's default choice for a while, but aNobii has a distinct look with a lot of customization available that I think people should definitely consider.
For my book collection, LibraryThing will clearly be the most useful. If I want facebook integration it is there, but I can be sure that I will be able to keep track of every book I have, even if it is an old edition. It is harder for me to chose between Goodreads and aNobii because a social network of readers is not really what I care about right now. I may try out aNobii to keep track of books currently read and reading goals for the year just because of the simplicity of the interface while keeping a lot of customization options available.
If you have a large collection of books, or just like talking about books, I hope this helps in showing you what is available on the web to meet your needs. If you still can't make up your mind, just take a sample of your books and try out more than one site for a week or two. The differences will be very apparent as soon as you start logging in and trying to use the systems.
