Ah, yes, LibraryThing. Getting in a bit of a panic, Thursday evening, the 'Crossroads' 140-DVD megaset still only 25% watched ... and no homework done. Beginning to wish I was flippin' Tithonus, ergo must be going mad. Quickly added a few of the vast Crail collection of homemaking manuals to LibraryThing [after the embarrassing discovery YET AGAIN that there was a pre-existing account, dormant and erased from memory], then hit a hiatus. Where in the Library [spoken a la Celia Johnson in 'Brief Encounter'] have the Fanny Cradock masterpieces gone? ... Then gave up.Workwise, anything remotely related to cataloguing starts an attack of the guilts, as well as an agitated grab for the gin. Having to assign shelf locations to books I don't even have in front of me, Victorian and Edwardian books with helpful titles like 'My country garden' and 'Waftings of a wanderer', and LibraryThing is usually lined up on the tabs along with Google books, OpenLibrary [which I like playing with to see which phrase it comes up with when it hasn't got details of a book - Good grief? Shucky darn? Cor blimey?], Botanicus, Biodiversity Heritage Library, Internet Archive, the cataloguing resorts of the desperate. Using LibraryThing for books that few individuals or libraries still own [but probably lots of thrift stores and Oxfam Shops do ... and the Plant Sciences Library at Cambridge] has made me think more than once 'I really ought to add some of the stuff we have here to this. There must be bibliophiles out there who really do want to know about 'Daffodils I have loved''. That isn't a joke, more a pathetic attempt not to face up to the knowledge that the Plant Sciences Library could make a useful contribution to LibraryThing. But GAWD, we are talking Augean Stables. Where's Rumplestiltskin when you need him? Oops, wrong story. But there's no point in doing this on a professional level unless it's done properly. And once again I'm a bit concerned about all these little ... deposits ... I'm excreting on the web.
On a personal level, LibraryThing is a lovely resource, a wonderful community for proper bibliophiles, people who actually make it to book clubs every week and bring lemon drizzle cake and home-made gooseberry wine with them. LibraryThing has that sort of, I don't know, warm feeling about it. Just the sort of thing a mentally-anal but physically-middenlike person like me would enjoy doing and benefit from. And let's face it, you cannot get much more anal than a field for entering start and end reading dates. It's comforting to know that however schlocky the paperback owned, there appear to be hundreds of other people out there who not only own it, but have earnestly reviewed it. If I had plenty of time I would have enormous fun participating. But who on earth has? [Helpful comments about time speeding up as one gets older not required, thank you] Dare to allow oneself a breather from catching up with others' blogs [abandoned for a couple of days not because it is a chore, but because thought is required, and more avenues are opened up by all those clever people who do the tasks properly] and Google reader admonishes sternly that 'more than 180 items' are available for contemplation. Dash to the Hommage a Huysmans minibar. Hmmm, Wincarnis or Sanatogen?Anyway, excuses over, got to gird up the loins [and we'll be needing something with reinforced whatebone or possibly steel plates] for next week's can of worms, Facebook, and the cherry bomb Phil Bradley has dropped http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/06/google-facebook-faceoff.html Sometimes that boy needs his legs smacked.
