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Member: civitas

CollectionsYour library (868), Parts of Books (102), To read (349), Currently reading (6), Series: Everyman's Library (5), Series: Modern Library (114), Series: Modern Library Giant (17), Series: Penguin Lives (28), Series: Misc (16), Unowned (9), Wishlist (7), Favorites (135), Weed (22), All collections (980)

ReviewsNone

Tagsa: book (871), {cover: Amazon} (307), {cover: LT} (234), {cover: mine} (225), 20th Century (216), reference (177), computer science (167), 19th Century (156), series: Modern Library (115), literature: English (110) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

Groups1001 Books to read before you die, Bestsellers over the Years, Combiners!, I Survived the Great Vowel Shift, Modern Library Collectors, Purely Programmers, Rare, Old or Offbeat, Stalking Tim & Company, Taggers!

About meI live in New Hampshire and write computer software for a living.

The postcard is a night view of downtown Nashua, NH, postmarked Feb. 7, 1910. Night views like this one started out as black and white, daytime photos. They were air brushed extensively to add color, the lights in the windows, the characteristic full moon and clouds, and to improve the composition of the shot. Note the now missing power lines - the electric trolley in the image has no visible means of support.

About my libraryMostly computer science, history, and literature with a lot of other subjects mixed in as well. About the only newly published books I buy are computer science, because they often have a limited shelf life and they tend to pay for themselves or at least are tax deductible. For the others, I’m happy to discover them by chance at used book stores or on e-bay. I collect The Modern Library with the intent of reading them - which makes me read more widely than I would on my own. Books I otherwise wouldn’t consider often prove to be excellent.

My LibraryThing Catalog

LT isn't a library. It has no books. It does have library catalog entries - millions of them. Currently, my LT catalog entries refer almost exclusively to books that I own (a couple of hundred of them, as yet, unread) and to some of the novels, short stories, and plays contained therein.

Lots of people have created catalog entries describing books they’ve read but don’t own, books they want to own but haven't read, books they no longer own, comic books, magazines, CD’s, movies, and more.

If you consider LT as a catalog instead of a library then this all make perfect sense and all the postings about how one should enter only the physical books one owns can be safely ignored. LT just needs to add a little bit of support to make this generalization convenient for its users - a catalog entry type field would be a start: this is a book, this is short story within a collection etc. I do this with tags, but Collections may work as well.

If you should happen upon anything in need of correction, please let me know.

Star Ratings: There are a couple of problems with star ratings: stars are one dimensional, while work quality is a multi-dimensional thing - the interminable novel with passages of brilliance; the carefully researched but unreadable history, etc. Works are constants, while the tastes and perspectives of the rater change. The ratings assigned can be misleading. None the less, here’s how I now rate things:

5 stars - Exceptional in some way
4 stars - Very worthwhile
3 stars - Readable
2 stars - Disappointing
1 star   - A waste of words and time

Tags: They’re useful and interesting, so I use a lot of them. My tags can be categorized as:

Content Tags which describe the content of the book or other item referenced by the LT catalog entry - the subject, genre, time frame, when the work was created, sub-topics etc. These are classifications anyone looking for a book or other item, based on its content, would find useful. The tags all begin with a letter or number and sort at the top of the tag page.

Volume Tags which describe the physical item in the collection: where it’s shelved, when it was read, the source of its LT cover image etc. These tags provide information useful for managing the collection and its LT catalog. All these tags are surrounded by {}s and sort after the content tags on the tag page.

Series Tags which describe the item as a member of a collectible series. ~ML is Modern Library information: Teladano’s volume and binding numbers. ~EL is for Everyman's Library. All these tags begin with a tilde (~) and sort at the bottom of the tag page. Also note that series in this context is not LT’s author series, but rather the unsupported publisher's series.

Here are some of the tags I use:

Location: {L:whereWherein} where where is: Home, Office, Box, or Library (public) and the otional wherein subdivides the where. For most of my books, the wherein is the shelf holding the book, so: {L:H03} is at home, on shelf (0,3) of the build-in bookcase. For public library books (actually, there's only one of these for now), it identifies the public library: {L:LN} is a Nashua Public Library book.

Tagging books at the shelf level makes them easy to find. Clicking a tag with a shelf identifier returns an image of the shelf. There’s no need to arrange books physically by some attribute such as the author’s last name, no need to leave gaps on the shelves and no need to physically shift books around to make room for new acquisitions. Instead, just fill the shelves, arranging them in a visually pleasing sequence. There are topical areas within the shelves, but the system doesn’t break down when a book is shelved in an alternate area. Many books could be shelved in multiple topical areas - but, that’s what tags are for. Optimizing the set of topical areas and locations of books across the various topical areas within a collection is actually an interesting problem in its own right.

Have read: {read: year} where year is the year or decade read. For example: {read: 2007}, or {read: 198.} read sometime in the 1980’s, I just don’t remember the exact year. I do have a books-read log that starts in the early 1990’s, so a lot of the years aren’t that far off.

Now reading: {read: now} I’m usually reading a number of books at a time and try to balance the subject matter, typically: a computer science book, a non-fiction work - generally history or science, and some sort of fiction - often a classic or a mystery.

Yet to read: {to read: priority} where priority is a digit from 1: read next to 9: likely never to read. I have a lot of unread books. When it’s time to find a book to read, I start looking at the 1’s, then the 2’s etc., until something looks good. Books change in priority with my changing interests.

Cover image: {cover: source} where source is: no, Amazon, LT, or mine. For example: {cover: no} - No cover image is available, I'll need to supply one. {cover: Amazon} - An Amazon cover, needs to be replaced. Amazon’s covers can change without notice for a given ISBN, so the goal is have all covers be LT user supplied covers.

Visitors

These links pay for the counter: Dell Computer Coupons
N.B.: It's a coupon web site - NOT DELL, so caveat emptor.

Also note: This profile isn't as popular as the count might suggest. The counter increments whenever anyone views this page. As I return to it frequently, the count gets incremented frequently as well.

Real nameEric Hanson

LocationSouthern NH, USA

Emailericallforma.com

Favorite authorsNone

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/civitas (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/civitas (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (87), Awards (100), Characters (1453), Places (279)

Member sinceApr 29, 2007

Currently readingThe Perfection of Wisdom, Illustrated with Ancient Sanskrit Manuscripts by R. C. Jamieson
The Renaissance (Modern Library, No. 86) by Walter Pater
Head First C# (Brain-Friendly Guides) by Andrew Stellman
Programming the Microsoft Windows Driver Model, Second Edition by Walter Oney
A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn
Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK by Dave Mark
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