#13

LibraryThing and GoodReads are great sites and I like the idea / motivation behind them.


I think using these sites would be an excellent way for users at a library to find out what other people in their community are reading (by creating a group for that community and sharing within that group). I just wonder if there would be a lot of people who wouldn't be interested in sharing, either because they want to keep their reading habits private or because they don't really care about other people's recomendations and comments. And of course it's a great way for those who frequent the library to get recommendations from outside of their community as well.


I think the fact that LibraryThing has a mobile component is great, and I think LibraryThing for Libraries having an infrastructure in place to put catalogs on mobile platforms is even better. Using these services would be an easy way for libraries to make that jump to the realm of mobile content.

I also like the idea behind LibraryThing Local. It's a nice way to have a central location where you can look up literary events the same way that you might look up information about upcoming concerts or movies in a city paper (or, as I prefer, on the Onion A.V. Club website). It's not of much use unless every library indexed actually posts their events, and for me there are no events listed in or around Janesville, even though I know there are different talks and book club events going on all the time.

I went ahead and made a LibraryThing account (which is here). It took hardly any time to set up (you don't even need to give your email address), and adding books to your collection is very easy and very fast. My books aren't terribly popular, and they don't have much in the way of reviews. Right away this is reminding me of Amazon (at least in the way of recommendations, and it figures that a lot of the LibraryThing catalog is just linked from Amazon). None of the recommendations are really surprising me. I don't know how much I'll use this in the future, but I definitely think there is plenty that libraries can do (and already have done) with LibraryThing.