Online Book Communities

Over the past week, I have been looking at different online book communities.  An online book community is a website that readers can use to create and organize book lists.  It is also a social media site where you can connect with other readers to see what they are reading and read their reviews on books.  In the past I have used Goodreads which I feel is a great site, but what else is available?  The other communities that I looked at were LibraryThing, Shelfari, Booklikes, and Biblionasium.  Let me tell you a little about each of these sites.

Goodreads is a very easy to use online book community.  Then interface is plain but user friendly.  You can create virtual shelves on which to place books and you can name the shelf to help you identify it.  You can mark books that you want to read, as well as review and rate books you've read.  The site also has the option to see other people's lists and read what other people have said about books.

You can start an online book discussion or look at the lists that books have been placed on to find similar titles or to see what others are reading.  Goodreads also provides links so you can easily get a copy from online book retailers.  My favorite feature is that it recommends books for you based on the titles you have place on your shelf and books that you've rated.  You can also explore popular books, enter giveaways, search by genre, title, author, or ISBN number.  Signing up for an account is free and can be done via Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Amazon.  It is a social network where you can connect with friends and coworkers to share thoughts about your reading.  Is it appropriate for classroom use? Probably not - there is not a way to block inappropriate materials from students so it would definitely have to be used with teacher/parent guidance.  It is great for personal or professional book lists.

The first thing I noticed about Librarything is that you can sign in with Facebook or Twitter.  Even though I used Facebook to sign in successfully, I had issues connecting with retrieving my friends list and connecting to others.  It was fairly easy to create a virtual shelf and add books to it.  I like that you can edit the book information by changing the text or the picture or adding tags to make them easier to find.  It also provides links to purchase books. Users can review books, rate books, join groups, and talk about books with others.  LibraryThing also has a feature to create a widget of you shelf to place on a webpage or a blog.  This site has free book giveaways that you can sign up for and you can share your lists on a newsfeed.  Two unique things about LibraryThing are that it has an app for iPhone and it has an introduction tutorial.  Again - it may show books that are not appropriate for students.

Shelfari is hosted by Amazon so you can use your Amazon account to login.  I love Amazon so I was excited to try this site.   It has social media capabilities and users can follow people on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and Yahoo. Like the other book communities, you create virtual shelves to hold your books.  You can mark your books as those you plan to read, those you are reading now, and books you've read.  You can set reading goals, see reading statistics and join groups. You can also embed your shelf on your blog.  It sounds like a great idea, but after following directions it did not actually embed into my blog, but rather just placed a link to my shelf -

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog.  I like the way you can link your Amazon purchases to your shelves, I think that it is very handy.  I really wanted to like Amazon Shelfari because I really like Amazon, but it just wasn't as user friendly as some of the other sites. 

I found Booklikes to be more focused on blogs about books that creating lists.  Like the others, you can login with Facebook.  Signup was not as easy as the other because they provided a long difficult verification code to type in.  It provides you with a virtual shelf, a reading timeline, reviews, book publishing information, and book giveaways.  This was the site I felt gave me the least information about books that I placed on my list.  It does however provide a feature to include photos, videos, or web links in your blogs and reviews.

Biblionasium  is a reading community for kids.  Of the online reading communities that I tried this week, this is the appropriate one for your students.  Teachers register their students and recommend or require books for students to read by placing them on virtual shelves.  Students can also log their reading and parents can create an account that links to the child's account to see what their child is reading.  It also provides resources for classroom use including a parent letter to help parents get started.  It is very user-friendly and it provides you with guidance to set help you set up student accounts and get started using the website.  Students can create their own lists and see what their classmates are reading.  I think this would be very helpful in encouraging some of our reluctant readers and in finding a good fit book for students that have difficulty finding something to read.

For my personal use, I will continue to use Goodreads.  I like the way that it provides suggested readings and I already know how to use it.  In my Information Literacy Center, I can't wait to get started by adding students.  I have already placed the Bluebonnet Nominees on a shelf that is ready to share.

On a side note - I used a free software called Skitch to create and edit screenshots.  It is very easy to use and has great results.  If you would like to try it out, go to https://evernote.com/skitch/ to download it.

See you in the Online Book Communities!
-Lisa