Booking Through Thursday 12-13: Catalog

Do you use any of the online book-cataloguing sites, like Library Thing or Shelfari? Why or why not? (Or . . . do you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking to?? (grin))

If not an online catalog, do you use any other method to catalog your book collection? Excel spreadsheets, index cards, a notebook, anything?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves! or

I have an empty bookshelf on Shelfari. I have a bookshelf with two books on it at GoodReads. I have registered 279 books over the last five years at BookCrossing, but my level of activity there has been inconsistent at best. Besides, in keeping with the "read and release" credo of the site, most of the books on that shelf aren't with me anymore.

I think that all of this half-started activity signifies that I really want to catalog my books; it's just one of those "someday" projects I haven't gotten around to yet, since it can take a lot of time to get your virtual bookshelves filled if your real-life ones look like mine do. I really don't want to have to input the information in more than one place. I know you can search the sites to find books you have and put them to your shelf that way, but I think it would take much too long to get your whole collection up using that method, although I can see using it to add just a couple of books at a time.

If I'm ever going to get this going, I'm leaning toward setting up a simple Excel spreadsheet at this point and importing the book data from there. This might actually be a good project for my post-Christmas time off. It also gives me something for next week's "New Year's Resolutions" list for Ten on Tuesday!