I just ran across an interested new site called LibraryThing (found the link on BoingBoing). It allows you to maintain an on-line catalog of your book collection.

This is pretty handy for us who have many books (at last count, I’m up to over 4,000–half of my boxes in storage are books). Basically, you do a title or author search, or enter in ISBNs. It goes out to Amazon, and several major libraries, to get the details (ex. photo of the cover, edition info, etc).

What’s really interesting to see is the other people who own the same books. You get a peek at what else they have in their library–some of the matches are pretty spooky. For example, a whole group of people have the same set of cookbooks that I do. Must be a lot of people with good taste.

I’m in the process of putting in some of my collection, mainly to see what recommendations come out. If you want to check out what I’ve got in there so far, click here.

Another thing that I really like about the site is the ability to easily export your catalog. A big fear I have when putting my info on unknown servers is “what if they go away”. By having the export capability (and import), I can load up my books, then export as a backup. I’m glad they thought of that.

If you are into books, or just want to see what other people are reading, then take a look at LibraryThing.