“Library Thing” is a people's library. Its entire collection is built and powered by over 275,000 people who love to read. In this virtual world, you don't need to create an avatar to join, all you need is a few books that you want to share and you are in. The goal of “Library Thing” is to connect as many people and books as they can, it is designed to appeal to both the professional librarians and regular readers. I don't know how useful the site is to catalogers, for regular readers like me, there's plenty to like.

First, to search for a title is fast and easy. I can search by title, author, ISBN, or one of the 23 million tags if I'm ambitious. There are 2 ways to search, for me, the easier way is to use the “Search” button. This feature allows me to view information of the book before I add it to “My Library”. The second way is to search through the “Add a book” feature. The disadvantage of this method is that I don't have a chance to get to know the book first, a click on any entry on the search result list immediately sends the title to the “Recently Added List”, I have to take the next step, to go to “My Library" and see if it's the right book.

Once I'm inside “My Library”, I can sort my titles by author, title, date, tag, and rating. These options are not easily accessible at first glance, I have to poke around the page to find them. I do like the tools that I can use to organize my books. Subject headings and tags used by others can be borrowed or I can create my own. After working with the catalogers for so many years, I'm really tickled that I finally have a chance to try my hand at cataloging.

I also check out the site's Chinese language collection. 23,539 titles are listed, the majority of them are English translations of the original works. I did find a few titles written in original Chinese language, I also found a few Japanese titles mixed in with the Chinese ones. The titles are not arranged alphabetically and no sorting tools are available here, I hope this will improve when the site becomes more global and demand for Chinese books grows.

After a trip to a virtual world such as “Second Life”, I'm happy to settle in this book world. Thanks to my fellow readers, every page is filled with interesting information, each tag leads me to many new discoveries, each click makes me want more.