Mar 20 2008
Discovered LibraryThing
The week off for spring break has allowed me to explore all manner of things web2.0 and one cool site I discovered today is LibraryThing which allows you to catalog your personal library of books, write reviews on what you have read, rate books, or join a group that shares your book interests. The founder, Tim Spalding was just named one of Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers for March 2008. It was super easy to sign up, add books and then add a widget to my blog showing off the most current books I’ve been reading! Next I’m going to experiment with the reviews capability. I am intrigued to think that I can add this to my media center website and have “featured” books with reviews for parents and students to read and use.
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Chris,
Came across your blog through Twitter. I have started both a Library Thing and a Shelfari account and am interested in using one for my school library media center. I’d love to see how you are incorporating it into your media center’s web page.
Like Fran (above), I have used Shelfari and liked it.
How do the two compare, do you know?
I have not used Shelfari with my students and I had not really considered it either, but maybe I need to have a conversation with our media specialist/librarian and think about how we might be able to think about the platform for learning.
Thanks for sharing
Kevin Hodgson
Fran and Kevin, (didn’t mean to take so long to respond to your first post Fran!). I set up the LibraryThing in my sidebar to show the books that were nominated for the Maud Hart Lovelace Award in our state of MN. I may try it next year with the new set of nominees, and then have the students link to those titles to read the reviews of the books themselves. We don’t have email accounts for students at our elementary school, so we couldn’t have them actually join in that way. But as I am about to test the waters with student blogging, I may find some way to incorporate their blogs with books that I set up for them (such as the Maud Hart nominee list). Beyond that I am not sure how I will use LibraryThing. Let me know if you come up with other ideas. I’m not familiar with Shelfari, so I will check that out! Thanks
I will be interested to see how you use it too! I have signed up for a simialr service (whose name escapes me at the moment) for my personal use, and decided that in the time it took to enter my books and review them, I could have read some more, so it was a Web 2 tool that I did not really take up. I hadnt considered potential education applications…