Ponderings: Woo hoo, I LOVE Goodreads!! Goodreads is my go-to site as my online book community. When I discovered Twitter, I was still very much a tech newbie and I was not aware there were online book communities. By tweeting and collaborating with my Twitter PLN, I started asking about Goodreads because it kept popping up. Oh my gosh, when I signed in for the first time using my Twitter account, I couldn’t believe the beauty of this website!! I love books, book clubs, and keeping track of books I’m reading or have read, so I like that I can do all that and more on Goodreads. You never know when you will need a great title for your classroom or anywhere really, so the fact that I could upload titles and label/tag them however I wanted and put them under different lists was amazing to me. Now I know that Goodreads is not the only online book community out there, but I have invested a lot of time to it and I love using Goodreads. I will be joyfully be continuing with it because I have made a lot of connections already with readers, professors, authors and friends. Goodreads receives 5 out of 5 ¡YUPIS! and the 1st Place Ribbon for Online Community for Readers. [I just made up that award :) ]
Full disclosure: I have not been as active on Goodreads since the summer. These last 2 semesters of MLS classes have been more intense, so I had to let go a bit from Twitter and Goodreads. I send a message or 2 every month letting my peeps know that I am still alive, but I can’t devote much time to the sites. Hope you understand my Lovely PLN and Goodreads Community! I will be back full force in the summer! :)
- Join the world’s largest book club.
- Catalog your books from Amazon, the Library of Congress and 690 other world libraries. Import from anywhere.
- Find people with eerily similar tastes.
- Find new books to read.
- Free Early Reviewer books from publishers and authors
- Enter 200 books for free, as many as you like for $10 (year) or $25 (life).
- Available in many languages
Ponderings: If I hadn’t already committed to Goodreads, Library Thing would be a definite contender for 1st place for my book community. It has a lot of the same features as Goodreads with an added bonus of having availability to the Library of Congress and 690 other world libraries. While I was uploading the 25 books required of the assignment to each online book community, I would open up my Library Thing account to bring up my books in list form and copy/paste the titles from there onto the other websites. I like that the home and profile pages are uncluttered. I give Library Thing 4 out of 5 ¡YUPIS!
Ponderings: This website is by Amazon, so the Amazon and Kindle community can definitely benefit from this online book community. I tried to connect with my Twitter Tweeps through Shelfari and it did not give me any results. Even though it has been 7 years since Amazon acquired Shelfari, it seems to me that a lot of people on Twitter are using other online book communities and my Tweeps don’t have Shelfari accounts. I do like how the website and my profile look and it is a very simple website to use. I give Shelfari 3 out of 5 ¡YUPIS!
Ponderings: The profile I created for Booklikes was very fun to create and tweak, but at the same time a bit time-consuming. Since it is meant to be a quasi-blog/virtual bookshelf, with extra features, it took some time thinking about how I wanted my site to look like. Booklikes is tied to Facebook so it is also very attractive looking, and I see this site being used by Facebook fans all over. I can also see high school students using this site as well. I noticed that on the free themes (how your website looks) it doesn’t offer a lot of variety and that is a downgrade for me. When I entered my bio information, the theme I chose cut off half of my sentences. I had to edit my sentences, but still had to hunt around for a theme that would allow my bio to show completely. (So, in essence I ended up with a theme that wasn't my first choice. I am going to go back and tweak it, but not till the summer when I have more time, LOL!) This site required more work than the others because it has the extra components of the blog and extra features. I don’t see myself having several blogs to upkeep so for this reason I only give Booklikes 3 out of 5 ¡YUPIS!
- Explore this virtual community for ages K-8.
- Effortlessly share and update recommended reading lists online.
- It’s no muss no fuss when your students’ reading logs go digital.
- And save time analyzing reading logs by using our EZ tools!
Ponderings: The biggest advantage and most important and relevant thing about this website is that it is made for kids. It is very visually attractive and fun to look at. Kids, educators, and parents can have access (password protected) to help kids build their own virtual bookshelf and start a virtual book club with their classmates and friends. I had heard about and started following Biblionasium on Twitter, but hadn’t had a chance to explore the site. I am SO glad I had this assignment for class because WOW, what an awesome site!! I really mean that. It has so may resources within the site that make reading FUN for kids. I will be using Biblionasium for my collaborative lesson with a 3rd or 4th grade teacher. [After the teachers get through with all the STAAR testing, of course.] Biblionasium receives 5 out of 5 ¡YUPIS! and the 1st Place Ribbon for Online Community for Readers that are Kids. [Another award I made up, but very deserving :) ]
All of these online book communities are great choices, even for the most finicky of readers. Each site has its advantages and disadvantages, but they can all be used in the classroom or library with students as long as we focus on age-appropriateness.
P.S. The software Skitch that I used to dress up the snapshots that I took of my bios was so fun to use. I highly recommend you try it! I will be using it often in the classroom and my future library. :)
Biblionasium.com. (2014). Biblionasium. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from https://www.biblionasium.com/.
Booklikes. (2012). Booklikes. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from http://booklikes.com/.
Evernote Corporation. (2014). Skitch. Retrieved on April 1, 2014 from http://evernote.com/skitch/.
Goodreads Inc. (2014). Goodreads. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from https://www.goodreads.com/.
Library thing.com. (n.d.). Library Thing. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from https://www.librarything.com/.
Shelfari. (2006-2013). Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from http://www.shelfari.com/.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Booklikes. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BookLikes
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Goodreads. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodreads.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Library Thing. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibraryThing.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Shelfari. Retrieved on March 20, 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelfari.