Tuesday Thingers: Common Knowledge

Thanks to Wendi at Wendi's Book Corner for this week's question.

Question:

A few weeks ago, someone told me about the Common Knowledge feature of Library Thing. The statistics and basic information can be found through a link at the bottom of any page. Currently there are over 869,540 facts that have been entered. How do they get there? We add them!

It took me a while to figure out that you enter them from the book or author page. When you have a book or author page pulled up, if you look at the left hand side, there are a bunch of links you can choose from. One of them is Common Knowledge. If you click the link, it will bring up a section where you can add facts.

Have you ever looked at the Common Knowledge page, or viewed the history of changes/additions? If you were aware of this section, have you added any information? Do you find this information useful or interesting?

Answer:

I love Common Knowledge, I've been adding details for months on and off. Mostly I add series information, dates of publication and if I really get into the swing of it I add characters and locations. I find the whole thing extremely interesting.

However, there's always an however with me, the thing that annoys is people will come along and add something without looking at what others have added previously, so you can get conflicting info. I think some LTrs don't realise that Common Knowledge is site wide rather than being just for their personal library.

Tuesday Thingers: Most Popular Book According To LT

Today's Question from Marie at The Boston Bibliophile: "What's the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it? What's the most popular book you don't have? How does a book's popularity figure into your decisions about what to read?"

The most popular book that I have (according to LT's Zeitgeist) is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (UK)/Sorcerer's (US) Stone by J. K. Rowling standing at 32,518 copies listed in LT catalogues, 306 reviews with an average rating of 4.23 stars and also 243 conversations.

Yes I've read it but only once so far. I bought the whole series last year and read them one after the other. The only reason that I did buy them was that I'd seen a few of the films and thought that there was more to the story. I was right. I enjoyed the books more than I enjoyed the films and if anyone's interested my favourite character is Professor Snape (though I'm not sure if that's a hold over from the actor Alan Rickman or not) and my favourite book in the series was the last one Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The popularity of the series didn't really play a part in my buying them, I just wanted to see the back story after watching the films.

The most popular book that I don't have (though it is on my wish list) is The Catcher In the Rye by J. D. Salinger which has 19,082 copies, 225 reviews, an average rating of 4.02 stars and 111 conversations.

Again this book went onto my wish list after watching the film Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson, where the book was mentioned a lot and was used as a means of tracking Gibson's character. I wanted to see why this particular book was used. Still do, but it's not at the top of my list so I'll get to it eventually, probably, maybe!

I don't really go by how popular or unpopular a book is, though if a book is popular there's likely to be more information on it and so it's thrust under the book reading publics collective nose a lot more.

So things like 1001 Books to Read before you die and other "must" reading lists don't interest me. Left to myself I'll read what I want to read, when I feel like reading it. So if it's a bestseller, mover and shaker or just that dusty old book stuffed in a corner and forgotten by everyone, if it sparks an interest in me I'll give it a go.

Tuesday Thingers: Tag or Not

"Do you tag? How do you tag? How do you feel about tagging- do you think it would be better to have standardized tags, like libraries have standardized subject headings, or do you like the individualized nature of tagging? What are your top 5 tags and what do they say about your collection or your reading habits?"

I tag for my own benefit, I also use private comments and ordinary comments, though I'm in the process of re-organising my catalogue at present. Anything I can think of that helps me categorize my books I'll use as a tag, so I have author-male, female, english, american, french etc and then there's when the book was written, when the book was first published, whether it's hardcover or paperback, if it's part of a series, what number in the series, the time and location of the setting of the book, important characters, and of course then there's the genre and whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

I tag on my blogs too, it's easier to set up links if you tag on blogger. Of course I'm a bit obsessive but that's just me. Things I care about, like books, I obsess about normally offline too.

I wouldn't like standardised tags, I'm a bit of a rebel and would want to go my own way, so as far as I'm concerned it's fine just the way it is.

My top 5 tags in order of frequency are fiction, owned, paperback, author-male and to my shame, to be reviewed. All of them are over 300 except to be reviewed which is 298. The only thing I can say in my defence is that I only started to review in March this year.

Tuesday Thingers: Is LT Your Only Account?

"Why did you choose to open and maintain an LT account? Do you/did you use other online cataloging/social networking sites, like GoodReads or Shelfari? Do you use more than one? Are they different or do they serve different purposes?"

I only use LT for my library no other cataloguing sites at all. I'm not sure how I found out about it either. I think it was when I was reading a post on another blog, on another social network site, somewhere, in another life no doubt :)

As for the social side, I've closed down all my other blogs or pages. Having one is more than enough for me, especially as I'm so busy besides using the internet, and reading. Sometimes I wish I could just live on an island somewhere (the UK is rather larger than I intend in that comment). Let's say a small island, surrounded by vast amounts of open water and quite possibly sharks to deter visitors, there would have to be a decent internet connection though. Ok I'm waffling so I'll go now.

Tuesday Thingers: How Many Books Do You Have Listed?

"How many books do you have cataloged in your LibraryThing account? How do you decide what to include - everything you have, everything you've read - and are there things you leave off?"


At this moment I have 511 books listed, tagged and commented on. Only 11 have reviews though. I have quite a few boxes in the spare room that are full of books. I just haven’t got around to listing them yet. Well I have only been a member since the beginning of March!

I'm a firm believer in including every book I physically have in my possession, whether it has been read or not. That's why I catalogued a couple of Rupert the Bear Annuals from when I was a child and then there are my Teach Yourself books, landscape gardening and DIY books too. I have a few e-books listed and I think I've decided to add the lot in but I have to figure out how I'm going to catalogue them properly. I have about 180 not added, mostly those termed "classics". I don't have any audio books but if I did I'd put them in too.

What I don't add are books I want. So no wish list books are mixed up with the owned. I actually put my wish list on my wiki page on LT. It took me a little while to figure out how to use it but I update it regularly now and there's a link to it off my LT profile page - and then of course there's the two wish lists at Amazon UK, for fiction and non-fiction.

I don't add books that I no longer own either, meaning those books that I had and lost prior to joining LT. Being a book hoarder it's unlikely that I'll give away or mooch or sell any in my collection so that problem won't arise in future, and I really don't intend to loose any more!

Library Books though are a grey area. As I've only just managed to get my new library card after changing addresses I haven't visited the library yet. Not sure what I'll do then, but I suppose if I want to review the books on LT I'll have to add them in to my catalogue. That's a "we'll see what happens when…" decision I think.

What are your thoughts on library books, e-books and wish lists?

Tuesday Thingers: Discussion Groups

This week's topic: Discussion groups.

Do you belong to any (besides Early Reviewers)? Approximately how many? Are there any in particular that you participate in more avidly? How often do you check?

When I first joined LT at the beginning of March I was a member of about 20 groups but due to the time constraints of my coursework and blogging I cut it right down to just two, Early Reviewers and The 50 Book Challenge.

I do participate in others when a topic interests me, some of which are Book Talk, 40 Something LibraryThingers, and Thing(amabrarians) that go bump in the night, and of course The Green Dragon - but to be honest I lost interest in the talk side of LT fairly quickly, probably because there are so many groups that unless you have a lot of time to spare, finding the wood in all the trees is almost impossible.

In the end I just concentrated on the interesting libraries and people that had friended me as well as cataloguing my books and reviewing them. And now of course I've joined Tuesday Thingers.

How does everyone else manage their online time so that it doesn't eat into their offline time?