On the most recent episode of Core Intuition, @manton and @danielpunkass discuss whether micro.blog should implement an equivalent of Bookshelves for movies and music (and maybe pizzas and birdwatching). Manton thinks that books might be a special case, and also wants to polish the Bookshelves feature before expanding.

My vote is for expansion – when appropriate, and when time and energy allow, of course – but two things make the implementation of such a feature easier for books than for other media.

1. The universal employment of the ISBN, which we don’t really have elsewhere. There’s an ISMN for musical scores and the like, but, as far as I know, nothing comparable for recordings. So when I’m listening to something and want to post that on micro.blog, what do I link to? I usually choose an Apple Music URL because that’s the service I use, but it’s not ideal. Similarly, there’s an ISAN which is supposed to function for any “audiovisual” work, but it’s rarely used. Many people seem to think that the better option is to get date from IMDB, which covers movies, TV shows, games, and other media; provides a UID for each entry; and makes its datasets readily available. But there’s no auto-obvious solution for these media as there is for books.
2. Most people (not all!) read any given book once, but it’s more common, I think, to re-watch favorite movies or TV shows, and it’s certainly extremely common to listen to music over and over again. And these repeat experiences are not as easy to record as one-time experiences. But I wonder whether, as a step in that direction, Manton could tweak the Bookshelves feature so we could indicate whether we’re reading something for the first time or re-reading it. Maybe a toggle which defaults to “reading” but can be changed to “re-reading.” (Such a toggle might also remind people that re-reading something is an option, and as a big fan of re-reading, I would love that.) And then later, at some point down the line, a similar toggle could be used for movies and music. I don’t know how often I would want to re-post my listening to a given record, because I am prone to earworms and believe that it’s best to feed rather than starve such a creature, but it would be cool to have that option easily to hand.

Basically, I would love to have a Collections tab so I could see on a single screen what I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to. That would be so cool. (Maybe even, while I’m wishing on a star, a time-based search function. What was I reading/watching/listening to in October of 2019?)

Thoughts from the community?