Next Up In the Ring: Library Thing vs/ Shelfari

And it's a knockout!  A few years back, again while in my class with Calvin Wang at Arcadia, I learned about a tool called Library Thing and it changed my life.  That may be overstating its impact, but sincerely.  I've always been a reader and had begun a while back keeping a reading journal, after I started a book club, yes...I am a book geek.  And I'm not ashamed of that at all.

Regardless, Library Thing became my fascination with uploading all my books, and indicating books I would like to read.  This was really the kicker for me, because in general my "to-read" list has always been a bit unmanageable.  Since that time, I've had a baby and tracking my reading has fallen a bit by the wayside, though since "What to Expect When You're Expecting" is listed as one of my last entries into my personal Library Thing, I can tell that I was ever vigilant up until the point that darned baby (just kidding) made her appearance on the scene.  So, in class I created my own Library Thing and added a widget to my own personal blog.  This was also my first experience with widgets and the beginning of an obsession.  I'm sure that apps will be a similarly pre-occupying habit once we get our iPhones this week (p.s. I'm getting an iPhone this week!!!).

So, I had a personal Library Thing.  I also created a "faux" school library account under the name...ontheshelf4kids as part of a group project, but I thought of the name and was quite proud of it, so I have no reservations continuing to use it for my own professional blog/twitter/library thing/shelfari (we'll get there in a bit)/delicious/diigo/flickr/image chef, etc. etc. accounts.  So, I had planned to utilize the Library Thing account to build my own reviews of children's lit as I read it and utilized it in my school library.  Then, I read not once but twice about a limit for a free account of 200 books.  Now, I'm not one to pay for something if I don't have to, so this gave me pause.  I decided to check out the competitors.  Shelfari and Goodreads.  Shelfari looked great, but I had trouble signing up for my account and subsequently actually signing in.  Hmmm.  Goodreads didn't look all that....good...to me.  So, I went along my merry way.

Later, I went back to Shelfari and successfully logged in.  I was IN LOVE.  I thoroughly enjoy gimmicks and the shelving in Shelfari is just, well, cute.  The visual appeal is huge and if you're going to judge a book by its cover, you might as well do it on Shelfari.  You can create reviews, edition notes, tags, and indicate if you plan to read, are currently reading, or have already read the selected title.  There is also a widget to embed, though I haven't gotten around to that step just yet.  I've also created a FB page for ontheshelf4kids and wanted to add the visual bookshelf there.  I have one on my personal FB page, but haven't been able to add a tab to the ontheshelf4kids page.  Worst case scenario is that I link it to Shelfari and that's not a bad case scenario at all as it will prevent me from unnecessarily double uploading to both Shelfari and FB (which is a personal problem with Snapfish and FB, but I digress).

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Also, my district recently invested in Follett Destiny upgrade to our circulation system, linking all three buildings in the district.  It seems that Destiny has many of these capabilities housed at Shelfari, such as review-writing, rating, and tagging might just be referred to as subject search :).  As I learn more about Destiny, Shelfari may become less vital, but for now, I enjoy its capabilities.  I can tag books that I'd like to use for lessons so that I can search for them later.  And I don't have to pay (ahem Library Thing).  And last but not least, the sharing capabilities of a site like Shelfari will, hopefully, offer guidance for other librarians or teachers looking for a "good read" with some information about lessons as well.  Shelfari is the winner in my book (pun intended)!

Con-tech-ted

ontheshelf4kids is con-tech-ted in many different ways.

Image courtesy of www.flickr.com/photos/qthomasbower 

Twitter
Through twitter, a professional learning network has been established.  Furthermore, parents can follow ontheshelf4kids on twitter as we tweet about our daily do-ings in the library.

del.icio.us
Delicious is a bookmarking site where we have begun to collect a variety of websites sorted by tags for use in the library, by teachers, students, and parents as well.

diigo
Diigo serves essentially the same function as Delicious but has further capabilities such as adding highlighted areas to text on webpages, sticky notes to annotate, and more - both Delicious and Diigo have the function of creating groups as well which will serve well for connecting our library to other libraries which might benefit from sharing in our list of links to resources.

flickr
Flickr is a site to collect photos.  I became inspired when searching for creative commons licensed photos using a search for library.  I came across a colleagues' collection of photos of school library displays and decided I would like to share display ideas as well.  I have to check into sharing photos including students as to our photo release form, or I can edit the photos so that students are not discernible in the photos.  But I can definitely see the applications for using flickr and also for teaching students about using creative commons licensed images through this site.

Facebook
ontheshelf4kids also has a facebook presence.  I plan to utilize this as one more tool to reach out to families, students, teachers, and others to publicize the great happenings in our school library.

Library Thing 
Library Thing is a site to showcase the books in your library.  Using this site we can create widgets to create flash files of book covers for the side bar of the blog.  You can also write reviews and interact with the collection in other ways.  I'm still thinking about how to best use this tool and decide if Follett Destiny might have some of the same features.

Blogger
Clearly, we are here on blogger.  I haven't even conceptualized the entire scope of this blog just yet.  I plan to use my school website blog as well and may reserve this blog for professional sharing.  It may also be a jumping off point for student project blogs that may appear separate from this title.  I plan to use our school website blog to share about specific happenings with classes and offer students the opportunity to blog about their experiences during library lessons.  I'd like for this blog to have a specific format, but don't want to limit myself to just sharing book reviews, or technology integration ideas.  I want this blog to be VERY open ended, but I'd like it to be organized and reliable as well.  Any feedback is welcome.  I was thinking there may be a rhyme and reason to daily posts, like Tech Tuesdays, or Fiction Fridays.  This is still a brainstorm in its infancy, but hopefully it will flesh out quite nicely.

Time Ticks On
July is almost done and August will be here much too quickly.  Summer reading is in full swing here (a post I plan to share shortly).  I am attending many professional learning opportunities in August and plan to post more about each as well as the preparations that will be happening in our library.  The first day of school will be here before you know it!

Image courtesy of www.flickr.com/brenda-starr