Tag: Wishlist

thinking like a user, not a librarian

I should have know that this would be the slippery slope that lead to… a wishlist.

I did something today that was revolutionary. Well, for me, anyway. I tagged an album on RateYourMusic that I do not own, nor have I ever owned. I tagged an album for my wishlist.

I have been treating RateYourMusic as a LibraryThing for music, which it pretty much is, without all the flair and design and integration that LT currently provides. My personal rule (a.k.a. thinking like a librarian) was that I would “catalog” what I owned, not what I wanted or had previously owned. That’s how I roll over at LT, and for my book collection, it makes a lot of sense.

My music collection, however, is much more fluid. I’m less likely to hang on to a CD once I’ve grown tired of it, so I regularly trade out “old” albums for “new” ones. A while back I started tagging albums as “used to own” rather than completely de-accessioning them. Because I’m regularly acquiring new music, I need to know what I’ve already evaluated and passed on, and this is one way to do that.

I should have know that this would be the slippery slope that lead to… a wishlist. Sure, I have wishlists all over the place, from Amazon to the various swap sites I participate in. However, RateYourMusic is supposed to be a catalog, right? And a library catalog doesn’t have wishlist items, right? (Well, unless you count those books that never show up from the publisher/jobber/vendor.)

This is the point at which I stopped thinking like a librarian and started thinking like a user. Having a wishlist mixed in with my have and use-to-have lists means it’s all in one, indexed collection. It feels freeing to let go of the “rules” that keep me from using all of the tools available to me!

#7

This book has been on my wishlist for so long I’ve forgotten why I wanted it in the first place.

Solstice Wood by Patricia A. McKillip

Meh. I am so far behind on this challenge I’m just trying to see if I can read as many books as I did last year.

Solstice Wood has been on my wishlist for so long I’ve forgotten why I wanted it in the first place. However, I promised my copy to someone a while ago, so I decided today that I probably should read it and pass it along before it was too late. I’m glad I did.

The story pulls together the threads of the real world and the otherworld and creates something so intertwined that at times it’s hard to tell which is which. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of six characters, and the perspective shifts each time. Surprisingly, this does not disrupt the flow of the story, and only once or twice was it necessary for the timeline to back up in order to follow the new perspective from where it diverged from the previous one.

All in all, it’s a satisfying read and has a real-world message about relations between different groups of people with different cultures and motivations.

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