LibraryThing, You Make My Heart Sing! a.k.a. Thing#11

Ahhhh, LibraryThing. Never again will I wonder if I actually own a copy of a particular title. Assuming I've got online access and can check my virtual shelf over at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cyanbe, that is. And assuming I ever get around to actually entering my library...the graphic novels alone take up the better part of 9(!) shelves.

Check out a random display of titles from my library in the gadget at lower right! This took a bit of doing, actually. LibraryThing's Blog Widgets were easy to find and even easier to use...but once I'd generated the script I couldn't figure out how to add it to my blog, Blogger newbie that I am. (For any of you playing the home game who find yourselves in a similar situation, the gadget you want to add is under Basic, "Html/Java"--just paste in your script & you're good to go.)

I ran into a slight hiccup when adding a sampling of my library--I couldn't find a record for THE LIVING DEAD, edited by John Joseph Adams. Well, I couldn't find a correct record, anyway. The only thing that matched my ISBN search turned up THE LIVING DEAD by Stephen King. King is NOT the author--he's a contributor. One of MANY. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have been cataloged by the good ol' LoC and Amazon's info is incorrect. Not that that's stopped 131 other LibraryThing users from glomming on to this particular record. (LibraryThing warned me about this in the help files, actually. Bad cataloging is not, sadly, unheard of.) GRRRR.

My inner cataloger couldn't live with Stephen King, who authored only 1 of 34 stories in the collection and isn't even listed amongst the 1st 15 contriubtors, as main author. So I edited the record, uploaded a new cover image, added all of the other authors to the record, and submitted a v. short review. I also got sloppy--I didn't bother to re-order the contributors that had already been input into the record to match the TOC. (My inner catalog will never be satisfied. She demands marc fields the better to input physical description data in proper order. And, waffling as to whether to call the authors of the short stories "authors" or "contributors," she opted to leave their role blank instead. She will undoubtedly lose sleep over this. Diane, if you're reading, care to ring in on what the correct term is? My inner cataloger must be appeased. Mayhap I'll go back and fix the lot.) In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see if anyone grabs up my record rather than the Stephen King one.

Cool--I just successfully added a book to my library via Twitter! Want to know how? Read "Twitter Your Books to LibraryThing" at http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/01/twitter-your-books-to-librarything.php. It's fast, it's speedy, it doesn't involve much in the way of typing! I may finally have found something to justify Twitter's existence! (Not a fan, no, how could you tell?) OH. Sigh. It would appear I have found yet another example of bad cataloging and must needs edit my newly twittered book. Again with the sigh.

Time to call it a night...I've got books to organize on my virtual shelf, dontcha know.