Scott Gilbertson reviews goodreads.com calling it Flickr for your books. But, he mentions a bunch of others. Anyone using MyLibrary for Google Books, LibraryThing , Shelfari or any others regularly and have an opinion?

I've tried just about everything out there  to date (with the notable exception of goodreads.... thanks for the pointer) and its hard to say which is the WORST - there are none in the running for best.  So far the best approach I saw was on the social network site Ning... where you could start your own bookshelf ... it let you:

• automatically pick up the image and description from Amazon
• add your own comments/review
• allow users of your bookshelf to add their comments on the books
• tag the books ANYWAY you wanted (so I tagged all my entries with first two letters of LOC # and the LOC descriptors in addition to my own 'keyword' system tags)

Unfortunately they gutted the search system - so you can no longer find things by the tags -- imagine that slap in the face to users (I'd input hundreds of my books while participating in their early stage beta process)!

I'm still looking for one that is worthwhile (I thought that some of the facebook entries might be the new 'ning bookshelf' but so far all the ones I've tried -- and this was my only reason for signing up to facebook have been at best trivial and at worst broken).

On first blush I thought Goodreads had no tagging capability and was going to comment here that it is a useless toy... but it turns out that it uses (misuses in my opinion) the word "Shelf" for this capability.... (I should have read Gilbertson's review first as he makes this point early on!)

Now I have a choice to make... continue on the path I just (yesterday as it happens) embarked on of using a desktop program for finally cataloging my 4000 book library ... or going online with goodreads ... for although I find the interface a bit cumbersome (especially the tags shelf capability) I am moving more and more to web apps where I can.

I'm certainly going to give it a workout in the next little while

• goodreads has a facebook widget that I had not found yet (I have tried at least a dozen facebook book apps so far that as I said above turned out to be useless)
• the import (via excel csv) is seamless and seems to work well (removes duplicates etc).
• the site itself seems slow... but it might be usable still... certainly it seems deserving of a trial of a couple hundred entries to see

My bookshelf has to be fairly virtual. I'm allowed 4 shelves in the closet. When they're full, I have to get rid of one in order to bring another in. That's part of the reason I keep a reader's diary and like to write book reviews, so I don't forget!  The O'Reilly Safari bookshelf ends up being pretty good deal for rotating tech books.

My wife did scream when I tried to take over her pantry...

But when the kids moved out I converted the "games/pool room" to a library so between it, my den, and 2 closets with shelves floor to ceiling on each side I've been ok.... but I'm eying that pantry again..

That is a lot of books.. I might be able to manage a few hundred (if I were to count them) but 4000... damn thats a ton of books.

Did they get so numerous just by accumulation or did you one day decide to get a copy of every book you liked/wanted on the shelf 

(Or have they started to breed? )

1. They do breed when you're not watching them.  They also move around in the dark so when looking for one which has gone in hiding you're sure to find many, many more old friends that you need to stop and visit with for a while....
2. I could safely now get rid of a few of of them I suppose....I have some technical books from the 80's that now are really just keepsakes of good times gone by, but most of my books still have some use beyond sentimental value (i.e I have done some purges in the past but am reluctant to get rid of most of the non fiction; although most of my fiction reads are long gone.)
3. I have a few really old books that are still treasures... who would have thought that my first year Calculus book would still have value to me, but it occasionally does... (I sold all but about 4 of my university textbooks)
4. I think that the best book store in the world being located at a fairly far distance has something to do with it....(its about a six hour drive each direction; so when I do get down there I tend to buy 12 - 20 books at a crack). While  I have favorite stores in London, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angles (well actually Hollywood of all places), Melbourne, Sydney, Wellington, Portland, and Seattle, I DO NOT have one in my home town!  When I was traveling a lot I picked up books even in Australia where they tend to be very expensive compared to here at home... different perspectives are a wonderful thing to have access to....

I still have my first year Calculus book too!! Except it was a hand me down from a cousin, so its way older than I've had it. (and it is a definite treasure)

Yeah, I've kept lots of my higher maths, science and engineering books. Every once in a while I find the need to refer to them.
I think  I'd only ever get rid of them if I found someone to pass em down to.
But these days, the unis have a 'deal' with the publishers. So they keep changing editions and set texts each year. Makes it harder to pass em on.

I find the mechanism for  tagging shelving in Goodreads a little clunky (and it seems to have a bug where it doesn't always record a new entry on the first try)... but that said:

I've adopted this site as the one I am going to use to catalog my library!

When I get a chance I'll write a mini review of it, but for now suffice to say, its the first service I've found that comes close enough to what I myself would put in such an application that I'm willing to spend the time entering my own books (I've now got about 15% of my books entered, all with ratings, but only a small number "shelved", and no reviews at all entered so have a long way to go!)

I've "started" using Goodreads, although not particularly indepth use.  I'm mainly using it because (a) I have a few friends using it and (b) it has a Facebook app.  That's my 2 cents worth for now...

It's on my "try" list for the weekend. I'll you know how it goes. Bric has me really interested now...