Query......What's the best site for this?

In a previous blog entry I review some social networking sites. A user has asked me in the comments the following question:-
I am looking for a way to catalog and organize my home library of about 1000 books. Not interested at this point for the social interaction. What's the best site for this?
Funnily enough I had been thinking about this when I was around a friends who was showing me Delicious Library. I know this has been reviewed many times, but I do like it. Obviously you need a Apple mac. Delicious Library describes itself as:-
Get your Mac, a webcam, and Delicious Library and rediscover your home library. Just point any FireWire digital video camera, like an Apple iSight®, at the barcode on the back of any book, movie, music, or video game. Delicious Library does the rest. The barcode is scanned and within seconds the item's cover appears on your digital shelves filled with tons of in-depth information downloaded from one of six different web sources from around the world.
I like the idea of doing that so simply of adding your media sources (dvd,cd and books) with a scanner from your i-sight camera. If you want all media try this. It does cost $40, but then thats not too bad is it?
If you want to do just books my preference is with librarything.

Tim Spalding and libraries

Tim Spalding over on librarything has an interesting (and short) article entitled Will libraries die. To summarise he says:-
Let's all stop imagining a library without books, and imagine a library without CDs and DVDs. Let's imagine a library with books, and hope for one with more of them. Maybe it's just me, but I'm jazzed by that prospect.

The week that was.........

Another week and another 3 I missed to blog more fully about.
1. A new book By Walt Crawford called Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change. Available from lulu for £11.85. Looks as thought provoking as his blog is.
2. Tim Spalding's treatise entitled No more User Generated Content on LibraryThing. I think he's sick of the word ;)
3. Following on from my previous blog about the threats Kathy Sierra has faced on the blogosphere, business week has an interesting analysis entitled Dispatches from the Blog Battle Zone. Looking both at the misogyny and anonymity (as some other bloggers have also written about). A worthy article if you have the time.

The sad face of blogging..........

I've just been pointed to some terrible news on crunchnotes about the death threats to blogger, Kathy Sierra. Some of the written text and images are truly disturbing. I love being part of the blogosphere and social networking, but its really sad when something like this occurs. Kathy has now had to stop going to conference's. I hope Kathy is able to go to conferences soon and this person is caught and punished for doing something like this.

My five non-library blog reads

Well, as mentioned previously, Rachel Singer Gordon on liminal librarian asked which 5 non library blogs one reads. Here goes.

1. A VC blog. A VC discusses social software and sport and family.
2. Tim Anderson's Media Studies Gateway Page. A guy I bookmooched a book off months ago, gave me his blog address. The rest they say is history. Musings of a communications professor of Denison University on TV, relationships and the social web (not in that order).
3. Tom Coates blog plasticbag is always worth a read. He describes it as:-
'A weblog by Tom Coates - quitting the fire to cold complexions needing it
Concerning future media, social software, mass-amateurisation and the web of data.'

4. Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine for his idea's on blogging, television and the media.
5. Stephen O'hear's Social web for similar reasons to Jeff Jarvis. Though his love of Twitter is tiring.

The week that was.........

Another week and another three blogs to add.
1.Having discussed Revish before, its seems it will be rolling out on march the 30th. Revish is different to other social cataloguing sites, in that its more about book reviews. Looking forward to it.
2. Still enjoying the social networking site for library 2.0 on ning. I've recently joined the librarian blogger for ning. check it.
3. Rachel Singer Gordon, over on Liminal Librarian asks what other 5 (non) library blogs they read. People have time to read non-library blogs?

Twitter........IM for the dull classes

John Blyberg has a great comment on Twitter, entitled Thank God for the (twittering) voice of reason…. I love the descroption he gives for it as follows:-
'I say Twitter is the Paris Hilton of the social web. Slutty and unfortunate. The basest manifestation of the culture and systems it represents.'
I just don't get twitter. Some people say it's great at conference, where you can network etc. But I disagree. If your networking in a conference, two things will happen. You'll network with the top experts first and foremost. Which leads to my second point. If your 'stalking' the upper hierarchyy, what happens to the other people at the conference? They get left behind. I go to a few conferences on the social web to meet and SOCIALISE with other people because thats what I thought the social web was supposed to do.

The book I read maybe wrong......but I still like it

I've been reading Don Tapscott's wonderful book Wikinomics. I think its really good, even better than the long tail, as Tapscott really gets to the crux of API's and the sharing mentality on the web in the web 2.0 world. But, in some section 'I just think he's wrong. For example, when Tapscott writes:-
'Google's spectacular growth from the late entrant into the internet search game to dominant global company rest, in large part, on an open approach to innovation.'
Well, there not that open. Brin and Page have copyrighted pagerank even though it was there PH.D dissertations. I'm not knocking Google (viacom and microsoft are doing that a lot better). But, Tapscott's book is keen to mention how educational institutes work together with business, to improve tools. Google could see pagerank was an advancement (though Battelle's book says some of the idea's had already been there before). I would still recommend the book though.

The week that was.........

Three things I never got to blog about:-

1. From Tame the web comes Ten Tech Trends for Librarians 2007. Michael Stephens considers this as :-

Sure it puts a finer point on it but it also recognizes the changes in my thinking about the essential duties of librarians:

Learn to Learn
Adapt to Change
Scan the Horizon.

2. Is Tim Coates excellent blog thats trying to address the loss of British public libraries. The article entitled Bookshops and libraries. This looks at 'Of course it was never true [that booksellers and not libraries]-- not only have books shops not spread everywhere, in fact in the past 10 years they have hardly spread at all- and they certainly never spread to many of the 3,000 places in which there are public libraries-- but it was simply was never an argument that made sense. If we have a generation of people who enjoy reading and we presented them with clean attractive well-stocked public libraries, they would have used them. Instead we offered them dirty old dumps with a few dirty dog eared hardbacks that no one bothered to steal and nobody wanted them.'

3. Total unrelated but library journal has an article on the new grahic novel by Frank Miller. It looks pretty awesome.

New library blog.....infodoodads

Five librarians have started a new blog called infodoodads. Laurie Bridges (one of the writers describes it as:-
Our goal is to review information tools on the Net. You know, the cool things you don't want to be the last to know about.
Brought via Ning. Obviously.

Master's dissertation on library 2.O

After going through library 2.0 ning, I noted Mike Habib blog, and his masters dissertation titled 'Toward Academic Library 2.0: Development and Application of a Library 2.0 Methodology. Its well worth a look for those who do (and don't) know much on the subject.

Google Analytics

After my recent trouble with sitemeter, I've added Google analytics, which is described as :-
Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.
I've seen it used before and looks interesting way of looking at who (if any) looks at your blogs.

Feelings of loss.......

I'm not amused. My sitemeter has gone down. It says no one's been on there for 36 hours. Its driving me crazy. I think I better get a grip.

Library 2.0 on Ning

Bill Drew has created a Ning social website for library 2.0 enthusiasts. Ning is described as :-
Ning is an online platform for creating social websites and social networks. The websites running on its service are built in standard PHP and the platform itself is built in Java.
Its a great idea by Bill and worth joining. Here's mine.

The week that was.........

Following on from last weeks article of the same title, i'm adding another 3 things I should have blogged more about on this blog. I hope to make this a regular thing. Topping the charts is :-

1. From lisnews comes the New York State Bill S2298- Protecting Children in the Internet Age. Seems very similar to DOPA or do I mean Social Networking Web Site Prohibition Act? Anyway, its another law regarding "requiring filtering software on computers in public libraries and schools to prevent minors from viewing indecent materials." Not again.....
2. Via Lorcan Dempseys blog I came accross David Rothmans blog on Shelfari and librarything. Rothman likes how you can transfer your list via librarything to shelfari, and feels this could be done via e-book downloads. I prefer a library and the physical object, but then I'm not a digital native.
3. Michael Stephens over on library crunch links to his interview with Robert Doyle (Executive Director of the Illinois Library Association) and the impact of American legislation on social networkung sites in the USA.

librarything and Shelfari coverage......take off in social cataloguing?

Librarything had some good coverage in the New York Times called A Cozy Book Club, in a Virtual Reading Room.
And with Shelfari getting $1million dollars investment from amazon. I like the idea of both librarything and shelfari, i'm always worried there business plan may fall down when more people suffer social networking fatigue. I suppose they'll add more features then........

Ipod's don't kill people, but the law might say different......

Over on Siva Vaidhyanathan site, he has an article called Cars kill three pedestrians all over NYC (No IPods implicated) , seems to follow on from the suggestion on a Proposed On Cell Phones, iPods In Crosswalk. Seems very strange idea that ipods are causing us to walk in front of cars. Perhaps there all listening to libvibes ;)

Librarything and tagging

Tim Spalding over on librarything has a great post called Percent who tag, as a follow up to his other post (When tags work and when they don't: Amazon and LibraryThing)
In it,he says:-
'Here's some data on that issue. I compared the number of books a LibraryThing member has with whether they tag or not. The later is defined as having at least one tag, so it over-represents taggers. But the trend is clear. The more you have to keep track of, the more you tag.'
I really like to tag stuff now (I really like the new feature in blogger for tagging).
The other thing I like about the article is it also engages the user with site (librarything I'm talking about). Some social cataloguing sites forget to engage there users, but not on librarything.