Week 6 is about wikis. In order to do my homework, I have to access a link in my work email account which I only access from work. I'll be doing that homework on Monday. Instead I'm doing my homework for Week 7 today...the week I've been most excited about and most dreading.
You may be wondering why I could possibly dread the week we work on social cataloguing (think Good Reads, LibraryThing, and Shelfari). Okay, so this is how addicted I am to books: I have an account with Good Reads, Shelfari, AND LibraryThing! There, my secret is out! Go ahead, mock me. I have all these accounts mostly because some friends are on one or the other.
Just for you, here is the chronology. I joined LibraryThing first (back in April 2007), added a few books and never went back. Even I don't know why.
When I had a Facebook account, I joined weRead (2008). It was okay but hard on computer performance (slow to load). Being fed up with weRead, I went in search of something better. That's when I found Good Reads (October 2010). I convinced two of my friends to join and have been happy there. I even won a free book through their First Reads program. And their Recommendations feature is awesome (more about that later). They have a Reading Challenge feature where you enter how many books you would like to read during the year and it keeps track of how close you are to your goal. I haven't done it but it's interesting to see what others put as their goals. For non-readers, I guess the goal of 4 books in one year is a strain.
While trying to convince another friend to join Good Reads, she was trying to convince me to join Shelfari (January 2011). She likes that it looks like an actual bookshelf instead of a list with covers. And I've been happy there too. They have a fabulous feature called My Reading Stats. Not only does it show you how many books you've read each year (this is how I know I have already read 102 titles and I still have the month of November and December to go) but also a graph of your ratings (I use 3 stars a lot) and other interesting factoids. One of the things I really like about Shelfari is that it is sort of like a wiki. You can edit the information on a title's page. You can even add titles that aren't found.
When I saw the outline for the Learning 2.0 course I'm taking, it mentioned LibraryThing. 'Oh right', I thought, 'I haven't been to that account in ages'. So I dug out my account password and got reacquainted. I love that LibraryThing has library standard information like Dewey classification so I can use it to organize my personal library. I've decided that (for now?) I'm going to use LibraryThing to catalogue only the titles I actually own. I spent two days entering the ISBN (because I wanted the exact edition) of all the books I own. I now know that I have 134 titles. Part of today's homework was to take the LibraryThing tour and I learned some things I didn't know. You have a limit of 200 titles with a free account (that's what I have). I have 134 titles already. 200-134=66. Since buying more books is on my list of things to do, I'll have to upgrade my membership. I'm visiting family in BC for a week at christmas and my itinerary includes spending a day in a minimum of two of the town's bookstores (one selling new, one selling used). I highly doubt that I'll be buying 66 books before the end of the year so I'll let upgrading to a lifetime membership be my New Year's resolution. The tour also mentioned LibraryThing's Zeitgeist tab. I'd seen it but not explored. There is a list of authors who LibraryThing. There are 6256 authors listed. The list is sorted by popularity but you have other sorting options. I saw quite a few names I recognize but have never read.
About the Good Reads Recommendations feature: it sparked a contest between myself and one of my friends as to who had the most books on their "to read" list and overall. This is why my "to read" list is now up to 354 instead of 230. The feature is amazing. By creating "shelves" (a more complex version of tagging, really) about the books in your profile, the Recommendations feature finds books similar based on some behind-the-scenes criteria. This has helped my friend find titles she's already read but had forgotten to add. I made the happy mistake of creating a shelf called 'books about books' (because I'm a freak who loves to read about libraries, reading, and books in general) and it is the recommendation shelf I visit the most. But I had to call off the unofficial contest; I can't live like that. If I allow my reading life to become competitive, it loses all enjoyment. Current standings: she has 801 read and 274 to read; I have 477 read and 354 to read. I know for a fact that I am missing books because I just can't remember them all. But here is how I finally let the contest go: She is 17 years older than I. I'm sure I could read 324 books in 17 years (did I mention I've read 100 already this year?) The important thing is that we both read and we both read what we enjoy and we keep track of it all on whatever site we prefer. We talk about books and we are always seeking out more.
One thing I've learned from using more than one book cataloguing site is that each one IS different. I've found a few titles that are on one site but not the other (which is infuriating since my tallies will never be exactly the same on all sites). I enjoy each of them for various reasons and will continue to use them all. Thankfully the multiple tab feature in my internet browser means I can use them all at the same time to cross-reference. One thing I wish to change about all three sites is that you can't print a basic title and author list of your books. Shelfari is mean enough that you can't perform this function until you've reached 80% on your public profile (I'm at 76%). Good Reads and LibraryThing will let you print the list as shown on your screen (aka in table format). For people who don't have cellphones (yes, they do exist) or who don't want to use up all their airtime with searching their Good Reads/Shelfari/LibraryThing sites, having a print option would be wonderful for book shopping. I think I'll go submit that as a site recommendation.
If you want to see my various accounts...
Good Reads
Shelfari
LibraryThing
Read on,
Paula
No comments:
Post a Comment