Well, I've heard a lot about LibraryThing for Libraries, but I actually didn't even know that they had a personal version. It looks like something that can be a lot of fun... not to mention useful for someone who has a ton of books, and may or may not even remember which ones they own or not! That's one of the best features of it, though: besides creating your own categories, you can add books into a bunch of different categories, including Your Library, Currently Reading, Read but not Owned, and more. You can import records from a bunch of different places (searching Amazon is the default, since they DO have most books available there), and then sort, tag, and share them as you see fit. You can link your account to almost any other kind of account you have (blogs, IM services, eBay, del.icio.us, etc.) and add as much or as little personal information as you like. I also really like their "Local" tab, as well, which shows you, not only which companies/groups/libraries in your area have pages, but book events going on nearby.
While plenty of libraries have their own pages (including most of the different UW libraries around Madison), personal pages could be useful for librarians as well; in fact, libraries could even feature them, if the librarians could all put up links to their different "Recommended" or "Reading Now" lists where patrons can find them, updating them periodically. Otherwise, of course, libraries can use a page for the entire institution to do something similar, especially if they have a "New Materials" area, where they could put all their new titles up. I don't know that it would be feasible for a library to upload its entire holdings onto LibraryThing (I'm not sure if records can be imported from catalogs, or if there's a space limit or anything, plus searching could get a bit cumbersome), but for selected collections, it can certainly offer some good highlights.
No comments:
Post a Comment