Thing 13: Library Thing

So Library thing is pretty cool. It is another example of Web 2.0 done right I think. It is interesting to see the sheer number of people that have cataloged their personal, professional and/or Library collections. I think for small libraries it offers an easy, cost-free means to catalog their collection and subsequently offer the ability for patrons to search by key word.

The one thing that I dislike about this (and Web 2.0) is that quantity of work becomes more important than quality of work. The very first statistic under Zeitgeist is 50 largest Libraries. No offence, but anyone with a lot of free time on their hands can enter book after book into their collection. I can see why this is important, but honestly, I am more interested in the authors that use this service and from an exploration point of view, the most used tags. I thought the “completist” list was especially interesting in that it looks at missing items from collections based on a comparison of lists. It sort of brings a “Pokémon” completion into play in that you gotta get them all.