For my next assignment, I had to create FOUR online book community profiles and again, I learned something new and loved it. These websites were something I did not know was available to me. I discovered:
www.goodreads.com
www.booklikes.com
www.librarything.com
www.shelfari.com
www.biblionasium.com
These sites will allow you to digitally shelve all of the books you've read, currently reading, or books you want to read. With a few clicks you can see all of the books(with exact bookcover) you have read. You can also categorize your books however you like, (some books may fit more than one category). Most will give you recommendations and reviews as well.
I made screen casts to show you how simple and easy it is to get started.
Goodreads
Now, I've been to goodreads before to get book reviews and summaries. But I didnt realize that I could keep a digital bookshelf. I really like Goodreads. The site was really easy to navigate. The number one thing I love about this site is that I was able to pull all of the books I had ever bought on amazon. It pulled up books I had forgotten all about, from at least 12 years ago or more. Nice!
Here's an example of how you can put the book in categories. All of the books I typed in came up,but what was annoying was that this big white box popped up whenever you add a book. You have to click in the box before it goes away. Annoying!
Another thing I like is that the summary of your books on your bookshelf is taken from Amazon.
The yellow checkmark is where you are able to instantly access all of your purchases from Amazon.
Here's a sample of my categories on my bookshelf.
Library Thing
LibraryThing was not as simple to navigate through, but it has some of the same components as Goodreads. The homepage has announcement, your book shelf, local events in the area, tags, and a lot of links.
The link to import books from Goodreads or Amazon did not work for me. I'm not sure if it was because of a problem with my laptop, but I couldn't get my list with ease like I did at Goodreads.
Here are the links to add new books to your shelf, join groups, talk in a discussion forum with others, and something that I like is the Talk link. This link will have different meetups, meetings, and activities in your area.
This is my bookshelf on Library Thing currently.
Shelfari
Shelfari is an easy and simple site to use. There are onlly four tabs with links to click on. Below you will see my initial bookshelf with yellow arrows on the number of books I'm reading and the books I've read.
The bookshelf has three main tabs booklovers can use. I've circled them in yellow below. The friends tab is a place you can connect with friends through facebook or twitter and see what they're reading. The activity tab will let you make comments about the books you've read or planning on reading.
This site has an easy import of books from Amazon or LinkedIN. Below is a picture of some of my past Amazon purchases and an easy column to check if I have read it, planning to read it, reading it now, or if it was my favorite.
I like the Book Activity tab which contains booklists and recommendation. The reviews and ratings will give you a good indication of which books to read. The green checkmarks are their categories for recommendations
BookLikes
Booklikes was another good site to store your book titles. It was more geared towards incoporating your bookshelf into your blog or reading other blogs.
This is my bookshelf on this site. I have started my three categories below on the left.
I logged in through my Facebook account so it imported my picture. You type books you want to add where I have it circled below. And like the others, you can say if you've read it, currently reading, or plan to read it. It added one of my books that I am currently reading below on the right, by the yellow checkmark.
If you want to invite your Facebook friends, that option is very clearly given to you.
The green arrows are your options to write text, quotes, photos you can add, videos you add, and url you can add to your blog.
What I do NOT like about this site is the ad in the middle of the page. I guess this is how they pay for the site.
You can also see the beginning of a person's blog it is recommending me to read since I am a newbie here.
BiblioNasium
This site is very kid friendly. I liked it. Though it wont let you put adult books. I believe my students would love to use this. It eye-friendly and brightly colored.
My profile is below:
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So drumroll please..........My favorite online book community is Shelfari!!
This site will be the one that I use on a regular basis and the one that I will recommend to staff and students. It was easy to navigate, simple to use, the import was quick and easy, and there weren't any ads to bother you each time you logged in. The book recommendations and booklist is invaluable when you are searching for your next good read. Parents will find that this too is a good tool to build a love for literacy in the home.
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