Online Bookshelves

Hello Readers! Ever have trouble keeping track of the books you want to read? If you're anything like me your list never seems to shrink, just grow! There are several ways to handle this problem.

1. Write down titles on scrapes of paper, margins of notebooks, class assignments, or any available space.

2. Keep a list of titles in a Word doc or other text file on a flash drive or other electronic storage device.

3. Create an account at one of several online sites created for book lovers around the world! For example Shelfari, LibraryThing, and GoodReads.

Let me give you a piece of advice, choices 1 and 2 don't work. I don't know how many books I've forgotten to read because I lost the scrape of paper where I wrote the recommendation down. Keeping a Word doc is great, until you realize you lost your flash drive. So if, like me, you need a better way to organize what you read there is an "app" for that! I have personally used LibraryThing and Shelfari. I recommend Shelfari or GoodReads for causal readers, and here's why:

I prefer Shelfari for the horrible reason that it was prettier than my LibraryThing account. But I also found that the ways I could store information about my books was better. There are three "shelves:" books I plan to read, books I am reading, and books I have read. I can write a review of any book I have read for all to see or I can make notes for myself. I can rate the book, and note if I own a copy or would like to own a copy.

I know that GoodReads is similar to Shelfari, but they have more ways to personalize the organization and look of your "shelves." I feel like GoodReads is the next level up on the social media scale. This site is geared toward sharing and recommending books for all. I enjoyed my brief look at the site and would probably have started an account if I didn't already have a Shelfari account.

If you are looking for more information about any of the sites talked about in this post come on over to the library!