I’ve been using Goodreads.com for many years. I think 15 years or more. Not sure. I’ve enjoyed it. It has a lot of fun features like setting your yearly reading challenge, etc. Lots of people are on it. Lots of my friends are on it. BUT it is owned by Amazon.com, and that always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like I’m contributing to their database. Now, they are providing the service, but it’s another one of those thing where I am really the product, not the customer.
I’ve been aware of LibraryThing.com for a long time as well. I’ve investigated it in the past and found it a bit clunkier than Goodreads. As part of my never-ending quest to cut my ties with giant corporate data-mining silos I revisted LibraryThing this week and was pleased with what I saw. I was particularly delighted to fine the Who We Are page, on which we learn exactly who built it and who runs it. As it turns out, LibraryThing is run by normal people, not megacorp techbro fiends, which makes me like it even more. They used to charge a fee for full membership, but some time ago they became totally free as some of their associated software products and services began to support the whole endeavor. After reading the information on their privacy page I feel they are the side of Good, rather than Evil.
So I used the Export function in Goodreads to download my data then I imported it into LibraryThing. The first two tries I messed it up and ended up with everything in my library showing up as “currently reading”, but it offers a one-button option to delete the entire import, which I did twice before getting it right. The import worked well.
As one would expect from a company that employs librarians, LibraryThing offers a lot more options for viewing and sorting your collection.
It also offers a rich system of book discussion groups.
LibraryThing has a very different look and feel from GoodReads, but I like it.
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