| 1. |
For your first venture: Just sign up
for a personal account and add less than 200 books.
You can upgrade to a non-profit group account at
any time, later. You can ask the other Quaker librarians
in LibraryThing questions, or how to solve problems.
And you can always drop out if you don’t like
it. |
| 2. |
Non-profit and not-for-profit organizations (small
libraries, churches, clubs, schools, classrooms).
Free to 200 books. $15/year for up to 5,000 books.
|
| 3. |
I would suggest naming your library with its actual
name to make it as easy as possible to find it. |
| 4. |
Usernames and passwords can be changed easily
enough after the account has been created if you
decide you don’t like the way you started. |
| 5. |
When you set up an account, you can edit all parts
of your database at any time including your library
profile. You would probably want to choose “public”
(not “private”) so that your meeting
members can see what you have. Other members of
LibraryThing can see what you have in your library,
but they can’t edit it without your password.
|
| 6. |
Meeting members can view the books in the meeting
library and participate in book discussions in the
talk areas, and this is a big reason we would want
to use LibraryThing—so people can discover
the great books and tell each other about them.
|
| 7. |
Books are cataloged into your library easily.
You type the title or other information, and LibraryThing
offers a choice of sources (such as Library of Congress
or Amazon) from which to import a record to add
to your catalog, and there you have it, presto,
cataloged in. |
| 8. |
You can edit book information, and apply "tags."
If your book is not found in the cataloging source
libraries, you can enter and edit all the data manually. |
| 9. |
When you catalog books into your library in LibraryThing,
you can look at your catalog in "list"
or "cover" view. |
| 10. |
You can search or sort your books by author, title,
or “tags” (informal subject headings).
|
| 11. |
You can print lists from a variety of five editable
forms (choosing whether to include tags, publishing
information, or other data). |
| 12. |
LibraryThing can analyze your entire catalog and
come up with 100 or so books you might want to consider
adding. |
| 13. |
Author, Title, and Tag clouds all allow you to
link to other libraries/collections with the same
titles so you can see how other people with similar
libraries are developing their collections. |
| 14. |
LibraryThing is working on a future option for
a more sophisticated package offering additional
features, such as a distinction between "user"
and "administrator" accounts, basic circulation-tracking,
etc. LibraryThing may end changing the pricing structure
somewhat, but you will be grandfathered-in for the
rest of your year. |
| 15. |
After you add a record (from amazon.com, the Library
of Congress or any other source on LibraryThing)
check it to make sure that the record contains the
same edition and publication information as the
copy in your library. |
