Week 14 - Library Thing, etc.

I have accounts on LibraryThing, GoodReads and Shelfari. I like the looks of Shelfari the best, but do not think it has as many options as the other two. I use Shelfari on my library website for showing the William Allen White nominees. I also like the feature that gives just a short summary of the book as you move your mouse over it.

I first started with LibraryThing about 5 years ago and was pretty religious about keeping up with it, but realized that more of my friends were GoodReads users. I tried keeping my personal books on LibraryThing, and my books that I read for school on GoodReads. This was just too confusing and so I finally shifted all my books to GoodReads and just created different shelves. I have a shelf for each book club I'm in (3), shelves or books I read for school, both grades 5-8 and YA and also the audio books I listen to. I use the GoodReads widget on my library webpage for books I'm currently reading as well as we keep a widget for new books that havae recently come into the library. I don't like this widget as well as Shelfari, but it'll do.

I just finished navigating around some of the "explore" features on GoodReads that I hadn't ever done before and discovered that you can spend wayyyyy too much time on this! Before I knew it, almost an hour had gone by. I answered trivia questions (addicting), explored quotes and added many of them to my list of favorites, I saw what people were on GoodReads at that very moment and what they were reading (probably won't visit this feature again). What really wowed me was the events link and how everything that is going to be happening in Kansas City comes up. Awesome!! I can't wait to tell some of the girls in my school about Ellen Schreiber coming to the Johnson County Library in June! This was definitely a gem to be discovered.

It's great having an online journal of what I've read. I still keep a little handwritten notebook by my bedside, but I do like having it online also. I also just learned about comparing the books with your friends. Very cool. There's always something new to learn!