After previewing the tour, this statement gave me pause...
"LibraryThing gives you library-quality data for your books, and is also full of social information."
No, it does not give you library-quality data for your books. Their "work" record is not comparable to a full bib. record. There are too many people in libraries who do not appreciate the amount of information that can be used from a properly constructed, complete bib. record. A good bibliographic record is THE FOUNDATION upon which access to any ILS is built. So, that being said, this database is only as good as the information going into it. B/C it's user driven, there is a lot of useful information that wouldn't be in a "library" record, e.g., author pictures, but then there's a lot of junk too. Its strengths are its hot links, for example, the links to author pages are interesting, but then the info is far from complete. Their solution to multiple authority records for one author is to have users "combine" entries. It's an interesting concept.
I do not consider LibraryThing an authoritative source. I don't use it b/c I have other databases for my own use that I can populate with data I know is correct, and also private. This is a personality thing -- I'm not that interested in what other people think of a particular book, nor do I feel it necessary to blog about my opinions about a certain book. (Can I say this as a librarian??)
So yah, it's cool beans, but I prefer other legumes.
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