I'm struck by something I've noticed on LibraryThing. I now have 594 books up in LibraryThing, but looking at how many I share with other users, there's only 44 . This seems rather few, though I have by no means added anything like the majority of my collection.
There are clear differences in the ways individuals collect books for their personal collections, and the way institutional libraries collect. Should I draft a personal collection development policy? Perhaps not, it might curb the pleasantly serendipitous purchases I sometimes make in bookshops. Granted Librarything users are atypical, but I would have expected my personal library to have more in common with others.

