The fun of book stats on Librarything

It was cataloguing my books on Librarything that helped get me into blogging, and LT (see my profile here) remains my catalogue of choice. I really can’t be bothered with Goodreads – it’s so cumbersome.  LT is also fun! For instance, it’ll tell you how tall your bookstack is…

How many IKEA Billy bookcases your books fill, and how far they’d stretch towards the moon…

And now, the good folk at LT have added a really useful (but still fun) stat – an analysis of your books against the non-trademarked Melvil (Dewey equivalent) system. Here’s my top level chart….

My LT Melvil (Dewey) Stats

So I have more literature that most LT user, and far less religion! Let’s look at a couple of the sections in more detail:

I must have some books on Maths. I was surprised that Maths & Science books only make up 1.3% of my catalogue though, given my penchant for them.  Life sciences are under-represented, but I am not a biologist, I’m a materials scientist who likes space.  I do have lots of ‘psychology’ books, but they come under social sciences in Dewey.  I’m also amazed that 5.3% of of the 1.8% of my books are on ‘agriculture and animal husbandry’.  That works out at 4.14 books – which 4 ?

Amazingly, you can click on each category and it’ll take you to those books in your list. This is indeed a powerful tool.  So here are those 4 books…

Phew! They’re all gardening /flower ones (I’m sure I have more of those!)

Finally, let’s look at my literature piles…

Most users of LT are American, so it’s unexpected that I have fewer US/Canadian novels and more ‘English’ ones than the average LT user. I am pleased to see that I’m generally ahead of the pack on major languages, as I do try to read as much in translation as I can.

I love Librarything, and as soon as I started using it back in 2006 I bought a life membership – it is only $25, and you get a powerful analytical tool that lets you take charge of your books (those you remember to add to the system that is), and a nice community to interface with should you wish to, and it’s totally independent. Reviews posted there don’t belong to anyone else like on GR too.

One thought on “The fun of book stats on Librarything

  1. kaggsysbookishramblings says:

    I love LT too and I would *never* switch to Goodreads. My library, alas, is not completely on LT as it’s in a bit of a state of flux at the moment. But I had no idea you could do all these things – really must get everything catalogued! 🙂

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