Thing 14_Library Thing & Goodreads

Once again, this is an opportunity for me to state that I am a tech-leaning geek. I'd previously tried out Library Thing and at this point in my life, don't feel the draw to attempt and catalog my books or the books I've read there.

I will confess, Library Thing is nifty and it's a great tool for readers, libraries and book groups. First off, it provides another tool to provide information about books, including readers advisory related data. The site is slick, moves quickly and is easy to navigate. I met a librarian at a city library that used it and they were quite delighted with the results. When I started adding books though, I found that most of my favorites hadn't been in many discussions and the reviews were often shallower than I hoped... I'm sure I didn't dig as deeply as I could have.

And now to Goodreads, where it just so happens that I have the status of "librarian." In my spare time or as I come across them, I fix and combine book entries to remove duplicate and update incorrect data. I also have a few friends on the site, so it's a community opportunity that I first discovered via Facebook. I liked Goodreads when I first tried it, but I haven't devoted much time to it. Today in my brief overview, I found the discussions far more interesting and I had great fun seeing what my friends have read.

Finally, I noticed one signficant difference - Goodreads does not offer tagging so for those who love to search and use multiple tags, Library Thing is definitely the winner. As far as library community use, tagging is a definite need to have feature, because it gives a very simple, easy search option.

Both of these sites are well worth a look... and even if someone doesn't join, there's always good fun to be had in learning about books that may be a good read.