One of the very nice things about Web2.0 is that there is a multitude of freely available tools to try out. One of the most interesting (to book-worms in particular) is LibraryThing. It is well worth a look because it illustrates most of the characteristics of good Web2.0 applications.The best way to explore it is to simply register and add a few books to your library. It is incredibly easy: it taps into Amazon’s database and you can add the details about your title with one click. Once you have a book in your library, you can add tags to it to categories it how you like. Then just click on the title (or the author) and off you go to see who else in LibraryThing has read this book as well, how they rate it, review it, what else the author has written, and a pile of information that you probably don’d need just yet.The beauty of the system becomes clear when you start to follow a topic, title or author that interests you. There is immediate access to the input of thousands of users.You can search for my library at jtravers, and you will discover some of the sordid truths about my reading habits.
The most powerful feature of this type of site is tags. Have a look at the tags for the whole community, and select ‘cloud’ view and you get a graphic view (literally) of the most common tags for the thousands of readers who are members.
You can also form your own reading group that can talk to each other and share responses to their reading.
2 Comments
Here is my page if you want look at an example:
http://www.librarything.com/profile/smik
John the thing that I hope the team achieves with myedna is a system that will help support and gather all my web2.0 tools. There is just so much great, free stuff out there - what I need is some way to help sort all of this.
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