There are many sites out there that track what you like. One of the most notable is the network of sites from the Robot Co-op, which include 43 Places, 43 Things, and AllConsuming. They do a great job in general, but I’ve always felt that the design of their sites are too scattered, yielding a focus that could be sharper. LibraryThing, on the other hand, is a service with a tack-sharp focus on helping bookworms keep track, review, and rate their books.

The first good thing about LibraryThing is that they’re well established. Since becoming a real business back in May, they’ve been receiving glowing reviews and a larger user base. They estimate about 3.7 million books catalogued as being on their user’s shelves.

Their site is wickedly fast, and their book search peruses through Amazon and 45 other libraries in the world (including the Library of Congress). They also provide deep information about each book, just like any good library catalogue would.

Signing up is a breeze. All you have to do is type in a username and password. They actually use the same form for signing in as an existing user and signing in as a new user! I was able to start adding books in seconds–literally.

Once you add books to your collection, you can add tags and reviews for them. Each listings page for a book contains an avalanche of information: tags, user reviews, ratings, cover images, other suggested books (based on users or tag similarity), and much more.

And, like any good reviews site, each user has a profile full of metadata, statistics, and tag clouds describing their reading habits. LibraryThing is just so full of interesting information that I could probably surf the site for days just looking at statistics! The design of the site is very utilitarian, with plenty of white space and a liquid design. It’s a breeze to switch contexts, and surf through books, authors, and other user’s collections.

Outside of their core functionality, the site offers blog widgets, mobile access to their database, and exporting your collection data. LibraryThing really has covered a lot of bases when it comes to functionality. This is definitely one site that I don’t have any complaints about.

I do have one suggestion for LibraryThing, and that is to connect their database with local libraries so that users can immediately see if a book is a available in their area. They could even be in partnership with the libraries and allow users to check out books right from LibraryThing. The logistics to get this off the ground would be immense, but, I would personally find this feature quite useful.