Today I finally had a chance to catch up a little on our Web 2.0 learning project at my library. For lesson # 10 we were suppose to set up and account in LibraryThing and explore. I was excited about this lesson because I've been wanting an excuse to play around in LibraryThing for a while!
LibraryThing is a web tool that lets anyone catalog their personal book collection! You can catalog up to 200 titles for free and endless titles for a very reasonable cost.
It was very easy to add books to LibraryThing. To be honest, I did so without even reading any directions. But then I was like, now what? Quickly I learned, like all of our other Web 2.0 tools, LibraryThing is all about being social. I could click on one of my books and see how many other people had the book in their collection. Very cool. There are also reviews, author pages, etc. And you can be as open or as private as you want with LibraryThing, which is always nice.
For the second exercise, we were suppose to go to the Web2List and check out the massive list of Web 2.0 applications listed there. Whoa! That list was really overwhelming. But, I was quite pleased to see that Amazon was on the list! I use Amazon in my personal and professional lives all the time. Personally, it has become a great source for Christmas and birthday presents for our ever expanding extended family. Professionally, and maybe this is a bad thing for a librarian to admit, I use it in collection development all the time. When I am trying to evaluate a book, and whether or not it is good for our collection, I always go to Amazon and it gives me a much better description (usually) then Blackwell's. It also helps me identify textbooks (which I try not to buy) easier than Blackwell's.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I thought LibraryThing was pretty cool, too. I'd like to put in my whole collection, but it's more than the 200 book limit in the 'free' account.
Amazon is the best for Christmas & Birthdays. Have you tried the "Gift Idea List"? You put in basic info on the folks you buy for and it will recommend items for them -- or link up to their Amazon wish list. Sounds nice; I will test its practicality as the holidays approach.
Amazon for collection development? Sounds great to me - my favorite part of Amazon is user reviews; they're always helpful.
Post a Comment