Quality Control in LibraryThing

I am glad that LibraryThing is one of the three nominees in the Books category of Web 2.0 Awards. It has won the following results in the five areas examined:

• Usability 4 / 5
• Usefulness 4 / 5
• Social Aspects 4 / 5
• Interface & Design 3 / 5
• Content Quality 4/5

I have used LibraryThing for 23things' exercises. I agree with the comment that it does Connect with people who read similar books to you, and get suggestions as to what you should read next. Its social aspects and usability & usefulness are exemplary. However I do have some personal reservation about the aspect of its Content Quality.

To introduce Davenport Cement Centennial, a book neither in Library of Congress nor in Amazon, two major sources for one to import books from in LibraryThing, I added the book manually by choosing the option of other ways to add. Little did I realize that adding was the easy part. Days later when showing the title to the author, I found out that the site had arbitrarily reversed the author's first name as her last name.

There is a file for AUTHORS, but it is read only. One can also make changes in Your Library, as suggested by Abby (Librarian with librarything.com) after my contacting the site, but your change will not make any difference to the main catalog. Once wrong, always wrong. The problem of reversing author's name has remained unresolved at this time of writing, whereas my follow-up question to Abby has been buried somewhere in her mailbox. So be aware of quality control in LibraryThing.