Thing 17: Online Productivity Tools

Give a review of the tool you explored - what worked, what didn't work, how might it be used either in or out of the classroom?
I was glad to see LibraryThing featured here as it provided me with the opportunity to revisit the site. LibraryThing is very much like delicious for books. It is a book lover's dream to social bookmark. You create an account, enter book titles from your collection, tag them, review and discuss, and network with others either individually or in groups. It has a local feature to learn about book-related events by entering your zipcode or address. For home-use, visit the store to purchase your own $15 barcode scanner. There's even a wiki. I'll revisit it when we get to that topic. Want to know more? Here's what others are saying.

I set up an account in 2006, added one book, and never got back to it. Now that I have bloglines going smoothly, I've learned that an excellent way to keep up with web 2.0 tools is to subscribe to their blogs. I've added librarythings AND thingology blogs to stay informed. I've observed many, many upgrades to this tool and I'm so impressed. For example, one feature is book reviews, which may be added to outside libraries. We already have this feature using Follett's Destiny, but for a small, budget-conscious library, this would be excellent. I also appreciate the community involvement aspect. The blog invited members to physically meet to have a non-profit library cataloging party. What a great idea! As a media specialist, I'm appreciative of the statistics to the site. Regardless that I have a widget from shelfari on this blog, and a widget from Visual Bookshelf on Facebook, I was curious to visualize the LibraryThings version.

In a school or classroom setting, students would have a forum for communicating about the books they are reading and to see what others who share their interests read. This would extend book club time. Statistics about students book choice states that the primary reason for selecting a book is peer review.