I noticed at abebooks last week that they’d bought forty percent of a not-so-new startup called LibraryThing, so I jumped on over, read the spiel and decided to try it out.
Whenever I register somewhere I play the eternally optimistic game of punching my real name in as a desired user-name (google Chris Gray if you don’t understand) and usually I’m offered Chris.Gray–83829aX, so I end up falling back on my wikipedia handle. To my surprise (shock and awe surprise) I’m now known on LibraryThing as ChrisGray. Ten points before I even try it out!
I’d only started a spreadsheet on my phone & computer a few months ago, and while it proved handy there’s only so much an offline list can do. LT makes it easy enough to add recently printed books (isbn, amazon search or card no.) but most of my older esoteric titles I had to manually add.
The single best part of LT is the community aspect; not only do you have an enormous forum (too large to simply peruse) but your list tells you how many people own the same book. I would have never guessed that two other people own a copy of A history of prostitution from antiquity to the present day, which was privately printed for doctors and limited to 775 copies. Unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps) nobody but me has Constipation.
There are statistics for those so inclined – only three people out of two hundred and eight share a book with me, which is no doubt a nod to the fact of my penchant for collecting strange titles.
LT not only recommends books that you might like, but people that share the same interests as you. For the reasons above though I don’t share the ‘eerily similar’ collections that are promised by LT. The best I manage is sharing seven books with somebody (who has seventy five books themselves).
So while you have to pay if your collection’s over two hundred titles (a measly $25 for a lifetime) LT sure is a neat idea, and I can still export my collection to my phone for when I’m stuck in a dank antique shop somewhere. 
