I use Shelfari, Goodreads, and LibraryThing, and they each have their strengths. Shelfari has come a long way, though I still like Goodreads slightly better—it's integration with RSS, it's new First Reads feature (both of which LT has had in place for awhile) are superior to Shelfari's.
If I had to choose only one, I'd be hard pressed to choose between LibraryThing and GoodReads though. LT reminds me of an open source project, there's a lot of geeks and techies that use it as well so it's sort of the standard and often the first to roll out and introduce new features, even if it's interface doesn't appear as graphical and pretty as say Shelfari. They live by the motto, simpler is better. And in terms of graphical, GoodReads probably lies halfway between LT and Shelfari.
In any case, it may or may not be important to you, but since you should be able to import and export your shelf between these 3 sites, you may want to experiment with a subset of your data at each of the others as well. :)
I've always found LibraryThing to be too busy for my taste. I'd not heard of GoodReads before and I've gone over and created an account. I can't seem to figure out how to import, but will keep working on it. I like the look of Shelfari, but there seems to be no way in any of them to divide out the audios from the print. I've made the suggestion in Shelfari. I finally went ahead and put my wishlist on a blog by itself because I want the audios separate.
Well, the ease with which you can do this will depend on which site your importing and exporting from. I was using LibraryThing as my backbone (having pulled in my whole shelf from BookCrossing), and LT is probably the most flexible of the bunch in terms of it's import and export capabilities so it was pretty easy for me to pull from there into GoodReads and Shelfari.
So you need to be able to export as some type of comma or tab delimited file from Shelfari to pull into GoodReads. Shelfari is a bit more limited in it's import/export capabilities, but it does work with some of the basic formats. You can download a tab delimited file of your Shelfari shelf from the link at the bottom of your profile page http://www.shelfari.com/settings/profile.aspx which you then (edit if necessary and) import into GoodReads. Though Shelfari gives the file Excel's XLS extension by default, it's actually just a tab delmited text file so it should open in pretty much anything (though looks best in a spreadsheet if you need to edit).
So basically you'll be getting your entire bookshelf when exporting from Shelfari, but you can edit the file and remove all the lines for what you don't want to import if you only want to do a subset.
Feel free to email me or catch me on IM if you want to talk more tech (or we can continue the convo here... whatever works best for you. I'm happy to lend my geekiness to you. :)
All that aside... based on what you were using before, and the setup you used with MSN, you probably will be very happy with Shelfari. So I'm not saying to change from that. Just gave you some options for trying some of the others. I would say the majority of BookObsessors have embraced GoodReads as their favorite (see my list of friends) and it has some things Shelfari doesn't so just in case you wanna "test the waters". ;)
Well, the librarian in me wants me to explore all avenues of book exhibitionism(?) I'll see if I can figure out the instructions in your post and try out GoodReads. Thanks!
5 comments:
I friend requested you over there. :)
I use Shelfari, Goodreads, and LibraryThing, and they each have their strengths. Shelfari has come a long way, though I still like Goodreads slightly better—it's integration with RSS, it's new First Reads feature (both of which LT has had in place for awhile) are superior to Shelfari's.
If I had to choose only one, I'd be hard pressed to choose between LibraryThing and GoodReads though. LT reminds me of an open source project, there's a lot of geeks and techies that use it as well so it's sort of the standard and often the first to roll out and introduce new features, even if it's interface doesn't appear as graphical and pretty as say Shelfari. They live by the motto, simpler is better. And in terms of graphical, GoodReads probably lies halfway between LT and Shelfari.
In any case, it may or may not be important to you, but since you should be able to import and export your shelf between these 3 sites, you may want to experiment with a subset of your data at each of the others as well. :)
I've always found LibraryThing to be too busy for my taste. I'd not heard of GoodReads before and I've gone over and created an account. I can't seem to figure out how to import, but will keep working on it. I like the look of Shelfari, but there seems to be no way in any of them to divide out the audios from the print. I've made the suggestion in Shelfari. I finally went ahead and put my wishlist on a blog by itself because I want the audios separate.
Well, the ease with which you can do this will depend on which site your importing and exporting from. I was using LibraryThing as my backbone (having pulled in my whole shelf from BookCrossing), and LT is probably the most flexible of the bunch in terms of it's import and export capabilities so it was pretty easy for me to pull from there into GoodReads and Shelfari.
So you need to be able to export as some type of comma or tab delimited file from Shelfari to pull into GoodReads. Shelfari is a bit more limited in it's import/export capabilities, but it does work with some of the basic formats. You can download a tab delimited file of your Shelfari shelf from the link at the bottom of your profile page http://www.shelfari.com/settings/profile.aspx which you then (edit if necessary and) import into GoodReads. Though Shelfari gives the file Excel's XLS extension by default, it's actually just a tab delmited text file so it should open in pretty much anything (though looks best in a spreadsheet if you need to edit).
So basically you'll be getting your entire bookshelf when exporting from Shelfari, but you can edit the file and remove all the lines for what you don't want to import if you only want to do a subset.
Feel free to email me or catch me on IM if you want to talk more tech (or we can continue the convo here... whatever works best for you. I'm happy to lend my geekiness to you. :)
All that aside... based on what you were using before, and the setup you used with MSN, you probably will be very happy with Shelfari. So I'm not saying to change from that. Just gave you some options for trying some of the others. I would say the majority of BookObsessors have embraced GoodReads as their favorite (see my list of friends) and it has some things Shelfari doesn't so just in case you wanna "test the waters". ;)
Well, the librarian in me wants me to explore all avenues of book exhibitionism(?) I'll see if I can figure out the instructions in your post and try out GoodReads. Thanks!
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