Exploration 5 - It's a LibraryThing

Will Require: Reading an article, browsing of LibraryThing page, create personal LibraryThing
Time: @20 minutes of reading, @20 minutes of browsing, @20 minutes of LibraryThing

Do you remember which titles you read for the Great Books for Children & Teens program last year? How about the book you heard about during one of our staff trainings that you attended in 2006? How about that book a patron asked you for twenty-minutes ago?

Don’t stress – everyone has trouble remembering what they have read – the good and the bad. Some people choose to collect note cards about each book, or keep a notebook full of thoughts on what they have read. Now there is another option – cataloging your books ONLINE!

LibraryThing is one of many free sites available for booklovers to catalog their own collection. From the website:

"LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth."

You can read more about LibraryThing here.

One of the fun things users get to do in LibraryThing is “tag” their books. But this is no place for a textbook cataloguer – users are encouraged to tag with as many subjects and associations as they can think of. For example, if we looked up Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass in OCLC, the subject headings are fantasy, missing persons—experiments, kidnapping—juvenile fiction, arctic regions—juvenile fiction.

Now, take a look at the tag list created by all the members of LibraryThing for this particular title. (Click on “All Tags” to see the different ways people mark their books). There are a lot of different tags, but you can see how everyone has a different way of remembering the book.

Libraries and librarians are using LibraryThing to experiment with online mini-collections. Recently, our own Deb Bancroft of the Annapolis Branch created a LibraryThing account to help keep track of what titles our county had used for Library Book Discussion groups (formerly known as "Book Banter").

"It seemed like a good idea to keep track of the books the library system used for their discussions. It could be a way to avoid duplication - a branch might reconsider a choice if they knew that another branch was discussing the same title. On the other hand, it's also a way to track popularity - the fact that several branches chose to read The Golden Compass is pretty interesting, given the controversial nature of the book.

By tagging each entry with the 3 letter branch code, we can sort our BookBanter library by branch code, or view the whole thing by an alphabetical list of titles. Entries can also be tagged by a subject descriptors, or by the audience focus. For example The Golden Compass was selected as a teen read by the Annapolis branch. So by tagging it for teens, we could access it that way should the need arise. I've also started tagging with a date - the year that we use a title for our library book discussion."

Many libraries are experimenting with using LibraryThing. Right now, most of them enjoy the “Widget” feature. The LibraryThing Widget takes books from your catalog and creates a small list which it can insert into your website. Shenandoah Public Library is a good example. The widget is the list on the far right labeled “Recent Books from My Library”. (We’ll take a closer look at Widgets in another exploration).

LibraryThing also offers RSS feeds from user accounts. Let’s say you find a user that has a similar taste in books as you, you might add their RSS feed to your reader to see what they add to their catalog next! Take a look at the Book Banter profile page. Scroll down and in the lower right corner you will see 3 RSS feeds you can choose from – recently added books, book reviews, and reviews of bookbanter books not including bookbanter’s.

Of course, LibaryThing is no longer the only online place to catalog your books. Other sites include GoodReads, Shelfari, and Books iRead (a Facebook Application). And knowing the Internet, there are many more in the works.

Still want to know more? Library Journal published an article called 2.0 for Readers in it's November 1, 2007 issue discussing the use of Web 2.0 tools like LibraryThing by librarians for Readers Advisory. You can access the full article through EBSCO MasterFILE Premier.

It’s your turn!

Create a LibraryThing account (or GoodReads or Shelfari, whatever you are most interested in) and add 5-10 titles to your virtual shelf. Don’t forget to tag those items!

Write up a blog entry about LibraryThing (or whichever site you went with) and talk about the ways you could use it in your library. How about system wide? How about personally? Post a link to your LibraryThing profile or catalog in your blog entry so everyone can see.

Now, log into your Bloglines account and see if any of your fellow Explorers have updated their blogs. Read about their experience with LibraryThing. Leave them a comment or two on their entries. Then subscribe to one of their LibraryThing RSS Feeds using your Bloglines reader.