This is a new feature to weRead and one that I found very exciting. It's a great way to get weRead users into their local libraries. I can see much potential in this for libraries, especially those who have yet to get involved in the online community. It could very easily be a way to get those libraries to find new ways to use the technology.
First Impressions
I had to search for iRead as it didn't appear in the side application area; it came up as weRead. Once I went in and clicked to add the application, a window opened asking me to invite my friends who didn't have the application. It seems the reason for this is so that weRead will become known to everyone on Facebook. I sent a request to a few of my friends whom I know love books. I quickly added a selection of books from the 'favorites' list and then was asked if I wanted to rate books, check out recommendations, etc.
It was fairly simple to add in books, though I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices for most of my selections. Even the sheer volume of things to do for each book felt overwhelming at first. However, once I spent a good amount of time on the site working with my books, it came far easier to me. I'm still not sure I like the actual look of the site, though. Nor do I like how many books they pull up with each search, still it's not horrid.
I would much rather prefer a drag and drop for adding books, but I'm not sure if there are any sites that have that particular aspect.
Ever more books
While doing research for this presentation, I found a cool site that helps you locate book sales in your area:
Of course, depending on your shelf space, this could be a boon or a potential disaster.
I'm not kidding when I say that I have piles of books all over my small apt. That's because my bookshelves (which line all of my available wall space) are full.
Libraries Using Shelfari?
Are public libraries using Shelfari at present?
When I entered "library" to the search window to search members yesterday, I got 100 results. After checked the result list, I found that there were 12 libraries with over 100 books on their book shelves. Others just had very few numbers of books or even no books. After I took a close look at some libraries, the records showed that many of them didn't log in Shelfari frequently. Some libraries' last log in was months ago. Therefore, from my obversation, I believe that there are not many libraries really using Shelfari currently.
Is there any potential that libraries will use Shelfari in the future?
Shelfari provides many good functions for members use. For example, members can build their virtual bookshelf, see what others are reading, find out what books are most popular, review books, recommend books to others, requesting other people's opinions about books, communicate with authors and so on. It is a great platform for members to manage their books, review books, and social network. Libraries can also use these functions to catalogue their books, track patrons' reading interests, give or obtain readers' advice, help students do homework, connect to authors, connect to publishers, conduct interlibrary loan, and publish libraries' activities. Further more, from the 100 searching result mentioned above, I found that there were 23 libraries becoming new members in the tirst quarter of 2009. While in 2008 whole year, this number was just 63. It shows a trend that more and more libraries start to pay close attention to Shelfari and may start to use it. So, there is potential that libaries will use Shelfari if they are not too commercialized by Amazon.com.
When I entered "library" to the search window to search members yesterday, I got 100 results. After checked the result list, I found that there were 12 libraries with over 100 books on their book shelves. Others just had very few numbers of books or even no books. After I took a close look at some libraries, the records showed that many of them didn't log in Shelfari frequently. Some libraries' last log in was months ago. Therefore, from my obversation, I believe that there are not many libraries really using Shelfari currently.
Is there any potential that libraries will use Shelfari in the future?
Shelfari provides many good functions for members use. For example, members can build their virtual bookshelf, see what others are reading, find out what books are most popular, review books, recommend books to others, requesting other people's opinions about books, communicate with authors and so on. It is a great platform for members to manage their books, review books, and social network. Libraries can also use these functions to catalogue their books, track patrons' reading interests, give or obtain readers' advice, help students do homework, connect to authors, connect to publishers, conduct interlibrary loan, and publish libraries' activities. Further more, from the 100 searching result mentioned above, I found that there were 23 libraries becoming new members in the tirst quarter of 2009. While in 2008 whole year, this number was just 63. It shows a trend that more and more libraries start to pay close attention to Shelfari and may start to use it. So, there is potential that libaries will use Shelfari if they are not too commercialized by Amazon.com.
knowing Shelfari deeper
This morning, when I signed in Shelfari and tried to search a Chinese book, I met problems. I could not find any result about any Chinese books. It's so disppointing that it only supports English, Franch, German, and Spanish. Then, when I wanted to upload my Chinese books, I still had problems. It couldn't display Chinese characters either. What a world do we have? I felt so frustrated after several times trying to replace the Chinese chararcters of the title and author name with English but fail.
Getting to know Shelfari
When I logged in shelfari.com, the appealing book shelf on the welcome page attracted my attention immediately. It made me feel like just grabing books from my book shelf and reading at home.
After clicked "TAKE THE TOUR" button, I got to know that I could build a virtual bookshelf, see what my friends are reading, discover new books, and join shelfari for free. I was a little bit hesitate to join it because I hate having memberships and receiving many spam emails. However, considering the group project, I decided to join it. Becoming a member of it is very simple. I just clicked the "JOIN BUTTON" and filled some information; then, I owned the membership of Shelfari.
Now that I owned my membership, I could build my bookshelf. I tried to search the ELLE January 2009 which I was reading, to my surprise, I got one result. Then, I added it to my shelf. During this process, I could also give my comments about this magazine, rate it, tag it, and mark it with planning to read, already read, or reading now. When I searched books by most popular, I found that the "Twilight"was on the first, and the rating for it was 5 star. I started to wonder why this book was so popular. Therefore, I read many reviews about it. Some readers criticized it severely, while some others highly praised it. It's clear though that this book was pretty debatable and popular. So, why not added it to my bookshelf and marked it with planning to read as I indeed want to read it and understand why this book begot so many comments and applause.
During exploring this site deeper, I found that it has many functions. Except building a virtual bookshelf, seeing what your friends are reading, and discovering new books, readers can also influence peers by rating and discussing books online, discover and learn from people with similar reading tastes, participate in online book groups to further explore literature and share ideas, and discuss with authors.
It was my first experience with going through Shelfari.com. The experience was pretty nice. I found that there were various activities which I could particitate in. I became a member of it, owned my virtual bookshelf, and joined two groups.
After clicked "TAKE THE TOUR" button, I got to know that I could build a virtual bookshelf, see what my friends are reading, discover new books, and join shelfari for free. I was a little bit hesitate to join it because I hate having memberships and receiving many spam emails. However, considering the group project, I decided to join it. Becoming a member of it is very simple. I just clicked the "JOIN BUTTON" and filled some information; then, I owned the membership of Shelfari.
Now that I owned my membership, I could build my bookshelf. I tried to search the ELLE January 2009 which I was reading, to my surprise, I got one result. Then, I added it to my shelf. During this process, I could also give my comments about this magazine, rate it, tag it, and mark it with planning to read, already read, or reading now. When I searched books by most popular, I found that the "Twilight"was on the first, and the rating for it was 5 star. I started to wonder why this book was so popular. Therefore, I read many reviews about it. Some readers criticized it severely, while some others highly praised it. It's clear though that this book was pretty debatable and popular. So, why not added it to my bookshelf and marked it with planning to read as I indeed want to read it and understand why this book begot so many comments and applause.
During exploring this site deeper, I found that it has many functions. Except building a virtual bookshelf, seeing what your friends are reading, and discovering new books, readers can also influence peers by rating and discussing books online, discover and learn from people with similar reading tastes, participate in online book groups to further explore literature and share ideas, and discuss with authors.
It was my first experience with going through Shelfari.com. The experience was pretty nice. I found that there were various activities which I could particitate in. I became a member of it, owned my virtual bookshelf, and joined two groups.
First Impression on Our Team Members
From forming a team to meeting each other and brief timeline, it only took Darling Buds of Pasadena Group's three days! How efficient our team members' activities are!
When I made my way to arrive at Kaldi Caffee in the afternoon of Jan 31, other three girls had been there already! Autumn, Jenniffer, and Miriam were discussing something. From the discussion through the whole meeting, I felt that all they were very prepared for this meeting. They are serious responsible and accountable. They dedicate to our group project and are confident with achieving high score through our group's hard work.
I'm so cheerful to be a team member of them. It's the first group project since I've taken MLIS graduate program. With these great team members working together, I feel pretty confident with our group project.
When I made my way to arrive at Kaldi Caffee in the afternoon of Jan 31, other three girls had been there already! Autumn, Jenniffer, and Miriam were discussing something. From the discussion through the whole meeting, I felt that all they were very prepared for this meeting. They are serious responsible and accountable. They dedicate to our group project and are confident with achieving high score through our group's hard work.
I'm so cheerful to be a team member of them. It's the first group project since I've taken MLIS graduate program. With these great team members working together, I feel pretty confident with our group project.
She took off her what?
I thought I'd add that one of the most entertaining parts of our last meeting was when Autumn started regaling us with the sorts of problems she has to deal with in her library. I don't even know if I feel comfortable listing them here! I can't imagine having to handle them on a daily basis.
She's dealt with unbridled domestic violence, nakedness in the stacks, other bad things in the stacks, and users treating the computer kiosks like private pay-per-view places (if you get my meaning, and I think you do!).
We're trying to convince her to write her research paper on extreme librarianship.
(Photo taken by Geoff.)
Reconnoitering
It was an idyllic Sunday afternoon, in a lovely section of old South Pasadena. After procuring sustenance at Kaldi, we decamped to the conference room Autumn had booked for us at the library. What? We are LIS students, after all!
Autumn showcased the clean, modern template she'd picked out for our PowerPoint presentation. We agreed that formatting all three site reviews with the same template would demonstrate group cohesion.
We settled on 5 things to review for each book site:
1. how the site manages book collections,
2. how the site handles book reviews,
3. what social network features the site provides,
4. any features unique to that site, and
5. overall site pros and cons.
Even getting kicked out of the conference room early couldn't dampen our enthusiasm; we trooped down to the courtyard out front and continued our meeting.
Our intrepid leader, Autumn, set out a schedule for the next intensive week. We'll be meeting for a practice session via Elluminate on Friday, and converging at Autumn's place on Sat. for the big finale.
Follow up to first meeting...
After reviewing what sites other groups would be focusing on we decided, as a group, to switch our focus from library thing to Shelfari...Sherry agreed to now take on the task of showcasing Shelfari. Jenniffer followed up by setting an Elluminate group meeting on March 11 to review where we are at as a group, and what steps we should take to get our project ready.
First Group Meeting
This is the blog for the Library 200 section 20 group…The Darling Buds of Pasadena. This blog will serve to document the group effort involved in investigating and dissecting different social networking sites that revolve around books, and readers who connect through books.
On January 31 the Darling Buds of Pasadena met at Kaldi coffee to get started on the social networking sites project for Library 200-20. With introductions out of the way we moved on to discuss what library social networking sites we would like to compare and contrast. These are the sites we looked at:
http://www.librarything.com
http://www.goodreads.com
http://www.shelfari.com
http://www.bookrabbit.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://www.paperbackswap.com
At the end of a lengthy discussion we chose three sites that approach social networking through books from a different angle. The links are listed at the side of this blog.
On January 31 the Darling Buds of Pasadena met at Kaldi coffee to get started on the social networking sites project for Library 200-20. With introductions out of the way we moved on to discuss what library social networking sites we would like to compare and contrast. These are the sites we looked at:
http://www.librarything.com
http://www.goodreads.com
http://www.shelfari.com
http://www.bookrabbit.com
http://www.facebook.com
http://www.paperbackswap.com
At the end of a lengthy discussion we chose three sites that approach social networking through books from a different angle. The links are listed at the side of this blog.
- We ruled out shelfari and goodreads since they are so similar to librarything.
- We chose librarything since it is considered the first such website and is also the most populated site.
- We also ruled out bookrabbit since it seemed to be more UK centric.
- We chose paperback swap since it has a different angle-it has more of “lending library” concept that was unique to all the different sites.
- We also chose Facebook since it seems to be the dominant social networking tool.
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