Yule Gift List 2006

Airline tickets to Hawaii to visit animazed. Yeah, Yeah, I'm dreaming, but as long as I'm dreaming round trip airfare to Novacon next year would be nice too.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley
In a new or very fine first edition hardcover this book runs $12.50 to $30.77 on biblio.com.

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold there is a hardcover copy for $34.00 on biblio.com.

Gift membership to Library Thing $10 for a year, $25 for a lifetime

Anything from Redstone Meadery would be appreciated and can be found in many local liquor stores.

Loose leaf tea. Red tea, jasmine, or any variety of black.

Among homemade gifts my favorite are cookies, candies, and fruit cake.

That's it.

Review: Library Thing

I now have a more complete review having uploaded 50 books into the Library Thing website (my catalog). I've gotten better at knowing how to pull information for weird editions of books, even from the Library of Congress. Part of the secret is to use what is unusual about it, like if it has an introduction by another author. The information still is not as complete as would like, but it simplifies the process. Of all the providers I still think I like Library of Congress information the best. It tends to be the most consistent so far. The ISBN thing works very well except where the publisher has done something strange like put two numbers in because it is part of a multi-volume work. I also wish the site had some sort of "condition" field for people like me who care about such things.

It still isn't a totally thrilling process. I suppose that if I started going for my full 4000 (or whatever) books I should buy a scanner. Yes, among other things I discovered that it will export the information to excel and that if you have a barcode scanner that hooks up to your computer by the USB port you can just scan books rather than typing in numbers. I'm pretty good at ten key though so I am reluctant to buy something.

I am still looking to see if there is some sort of way for collectors to share information about books so that we could, say, enter the Hill House information once and not have to do as much information entry. The collection of cover scans is remarkably complete. So far I've had just a few very rare books that were not scanned in by a previous user.

So I'm happier with the experience now. Don't know that I'd recommend it yet, but it is becoming more useful as I go on.