26.2, thing 4....social networks...it's exciting to me (and exhausting in a way) to see how many avenues and formats there are for connecting. Keeping with the theme of this blog I decided to be bookish about this assignment and boiled it down to something I've been wanting to do...create an online presence/source for my branch's book group - a place to keep track of what we've read, possibly with annotations, keep lists of what we might want to read. I've explored a bunch of different sites where users can catalog books and other media, connect with other readers, and get reviews & recommendations for what to read next. Some: lib.rario.us, goodreads, litlovers, shelfari ..... and there are more, as you might imagine.
I decided to go the extra mile and set up an account on LibraryThing because I liked it best as a whole.
Ways this can be useful.... see all of the above plus with LibraryThing I can get publisher descriptions of the books, reader reviews, images of book covers (to use on my marketing flyers), allow book group members to add their comments to the books, immediately connect with Library of Congress and publisher data, search LC and WorldCat databases, as well as others like Amazon, BookSense, Bookfinder. Great readers advisory tool. There are opportunities there to participate in forums or groups (there are over 5, 000 librarians listed who 'LibraryThing'!), link to book/library related blogs, check out author talks, and find book related events in my area. (exciting to note that when searching for events in Allston, there are links to follow to our branch library and the events that are happening here!). I like how easy it is to create and edit my library on this site as well as the variety of ways I can choose to view my library and there are options for printing my library. I can check out other people's libraries too, see how many people have a particular books listed....and on it goes. A lot of possibilities here. As a bonus, members can sign up to be Early Reviewers (get advanced reader copies of books from publishers and post reviews on LibraryThing) - as expected, though, looks like lots of willing readers for the numbers of copies available.
To start I've created a bare bones library, consisting of the books that our branch's adult book group has read since its inception in January 2008. The first thing listed in the comment section is the date we read the book. I want to figure out the best way to share this and get members of the book group to participate. I exptect to explore this more and tweek as I go.
For now.... add to identity: Thingamabrarian.
Check out my LIBRARY
(or see that I figured out how to add a gadget link....look left under my pic and click!)
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