Law & Society Blog

I just discovered Library Thing, which is a community-enabled book catalog. I’ve tried a number of times to catalog my own book collection but never got very far, mainly because the point of making a catalog of my books for myself proved elusive. (The assumption being that if I can’t remember a book that I’ve read, chances are that it was forgettable.) Library Thing, in contrast, lets me create a catalog of my books, including tags and reviews, for others, and it lets me view other users’ book lists. Browsing some other user’s book collection is, of course, highly addictive in just the same, slightly indecent way that browsing someone else’s physical bookshelf is. Add some some social networking code to Library Thing, and it could be one of these “obvious” applications, that everyone knew they were waiting for when they first saw it.

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