Bookworms Unite!

Nothing warms a Librarian’s heart more than recommending a good read to someone and hearing later that they loved it. It’s the best! I remember having a conversation with a worried mother in the Children’s Room about her son being bored with books. After she shared his likes and dislikes, I recommended the Choose Your Own Adventure series. She reluctantly checked out The Abominable Snowman. The next day, she was back rejoicing success as she proceeded to check out half of our  collection for that series.

It’s no surprise that Librarians are utilizing online sites to share their expertise. I spent this week looking into Reader’s Advisory and social networking sites. I explored the major players this week including LibraryThing, Goodreads and Shelfari. I must admit that I am more familiar with Goodreads and have been using this site for a year or so. Since there are numerous comparisons of the sites out on the web, I will tell you what I found interesting at each site.

My List of Discoveries:

LibraryThing

• Is based in Portland, ME!
• Has a fun description of a  job I would gladly apply for if given the shoes.
• Hefty Zeitgeist Overview made my head spin around.
• Clicking the LibraryThing Local tab lists and maps book events, I chose Other under Venues and found that Other included the Green Dragon Tavern and Grub Street.

Shelfari

• Love the bookshelf for my reads! Can I change the color?
• Like using the Tag Clouds to tag my books.
• Shelfari’s Book Tab lets you see the most popular books being read that day. The Hunger Games Series took 3 of the 6 spots (I know you were wondering).
• When looking into Genres under Browsing Categories I discovered some unique book groups; “Chiller (Realm of Horror)” and “Paranormal Romance is my brand of heroin”. Something for everyone.

Goodreads

• Does not have a widget to support my blog on WordPress!
• Explore Tab allows you to surf into Listopia heaven.
• You can create tag clouds that visually represents your shelves.
• For fun they have trivia, quizzes and quotes. The Never-Ending Book Quiz is awesome. (Warning: Don’t jump on this at 9pm).

David Radd has written a short article Crowdsourcing RA that is found in the Library Journal (Vol. 136, Issue 10) that describes some of the algorithms working for LibraryThing, Shelfari and Goodreads. Radd stated that Goodreads “has about 5 million users and 130 million books in its database”. Goodreads also conducted an informal poll asking how many members were librarians. Aren’t you curious?