LIBRARYTHING

While I like to read books, I didn't own that many books.  Most of the books I already read were borrowed from public library.  Public library, a great use of taxpayers' money.  For the handful of books I owned at one time, years ago I used Delicious Library, a cataloging software for the Mac, to keep track of them.  Its interface is a book shelf, very elegant.  Perhaps because of some upgrade of the operating system, Delicious Library stopped working, along with many other software.  I hate it when Apple does that.  All of a sudden, a bunch of my software simply stopped working because they rely on codes that Apple decided to drop.

Not long ago, through the NextDoor app, I connected with an elderly woman who needed to gently dispose of her book collection.  She could have just dumped them, but she hated to see books go to waste.  Over a few trips, I brought a large chunk of her collection home.  All of a sudden, I have a lot of books to catalog!  Recently, by chance, in a Facebook group for supporters of Little Free Libraries, I learned about LibraryThing.  A free app for the iPhone, also accessible via a browser.  I don't mind paying for software I really like but the trend of forcing the subscription model stinks.  I get it that developers need money too, months after months, but I don't want to pay for something continuously just to be able to use it.  LibraryThing is great!  Free is good!

Here is a snapshot of what I currently have cataloged:

There are only twenty-four books in my catalog at the moment.  I definitely didn't spend enough time with LibraryThing.  But it got me to complete reading a few.  It's nice to go into the app and add a Completed Reading Date.  The scanning feature is great, but for some reason not all books are in whatever reference database that they use.  For example, the Star Trek book had to be entered manually via its ISBN number.  One minor quibble I have about the software is that when you edit a book, say, to indicate when you finished or started reading it, the Save button appears at the top of the Edit screen but as you scroll to find the field you want to edit, the Save button rolls out of view.  The Close button, however, remains visible the whole time.  A few times, I made the change, but mistakenly tap the Close button instead.  The program gladly close and didn't ask for confirmation that the change(s) was to be abandoned!  Overall it's a good program with a very good price.