Hello again / a gift of sorts

[Tim]

I hope you don't mind me starting a new topic for this. I haven't been here in months and I have an offer of sorts for you guys. (If you don't know or don't remember me, I am the editor of "Alexander the Great on the Web" and the "Wiki Classical Dictionary," both major hubs for information on Alexander.) It's great to see this place is still humming along.In the last few months I created a website LibraryThing.com ( http://www.librarything.com ). LibraryThing catalogs your books online, picking up information from Amazon, the Library of Congress and over 30 other libraries around the world. As you enter your own books you can also check out other people's libraries. It's a great way to find people who share your most obscure treasures. Other features include interesting recommendations based on your collection, reviews, ratings, etc. Since I began it two months ago users have entered over 650,000 books. Hence I've been basically chained to my Mac for two months.Anyway, I just caught Amyntoros signing up! (He read about it on David Meadow's blog.) We have so many of the same books on Alexander that the library-matching algorithm instantly made us each others' top "similar library." I'd love to see more Pothos-ians' collections there and it would be a great place to post reviews of Alexander books. I will soon be adding a "groups" feature; it would be great to have a "Pothos" group.So, the gift of sorts: LibraryThing is free to 200 books. After that it's normally $10 for a year and $25 for life. How about anyone from Pothos gets a free one-year membership? I haven't offered this anywhere else, and I'd appreciate it if this stayed for Pothos people only.Best,
Tim

[S]

Greetings Tim,This sounds fascinating! Not quite sure I understand exactly what it does but I am going to drop in immediately. No wonder you have been so busy!Regards,
Sikander

[Tim]

I know. I need to get better at explaining. Sometimes it's better to "work up."There are desktop programs to catalog your library. This is an online program. You can use it just like a desktop program if you want to GÇö catalog your books for the joy of cataloging. But because thousands of other people have also cataloged their books, it does a lot more. If you use Del.icio.us, it's "Del.icio.us for books." Some people call it "Friendser for books," but that's only seeing the social aspect. Some people just use it to catalog their books and don't care about others' libraries.T

[amyntoros]

Sikander, I'm in love with LibraryThing! I never would have bought a desktop program: my library isn't that large, but I haven't succeeded in cataloguing it before now (it's a work in progress on the site). Couldn't decide whether to alphabetize by author or list by content, for example. And if the latter, there was the problem of deciding which grouping was most suitable for a particular book. I still have sheets of paper with various lists of my books but they end up being out-of-date before I'm even finished. (This is the reason why I haven't posted a book list on Alexandriaeschate. Now once I'm finished I'll be able to just post the link.) The site allows you to add whatever "tags" you think are most useful. For instance, I have Beth Carney's book tagged "ancient macedonia," "alexander the great" and "women's studies." Click on any tag and it will bring up a listing of all your books with the same tag. The program is so simple, even I can use it! And that's no joke - I've never even posted anything on Tim's Wiki because I find the process too complicated. :-)Plus it *is* interesting to see what other people own. There are people with 5,000 books and more who don't have one single book in common with me!Best regards,Amyntoros

[marcus]

Wow! You have been a busy bee, haven't you, Tim?I see that Nick W and Sikander have also signed up ... not sure that I've have a chance to for a little while, at least, but what an interesting (and exciting) idea.All the bestMarcus