Week 4 : Books and social networking

Books and social networking - who would think they'd go hand in hand?  They can.  And they do!  Goodreads is a free book lovers' social network and caters for all reading tastes.  Users create their own bookshelves, write reviews, rate books and find likeminded readers - thereby finding more great book suggestions.  You can also add books to a 'currently reading' or 'to-be-read' bookshelf.  It makes for a fantastic way to keep track of your reading history.

A particularly interesting feature of Goodreads is that it also allows users to join a variety of online reading groups.  For example, the Romance Readers Reading Challenges group has various discussion boards and monthly challenge lists to encourage you to read widely, at your own pace and with much support from members and administrators.  There are a large number of published authors - well-known and up-and-coming - who are members and it's not uncommon for authors to engage their readers in ongoing discussion about their work.  It's all very fun and very, very informal.

Learning resource:
Jacob Paulsen takes a remote user through the signing up process for Goodreads.  Please note: at almost 10 minutes long it's quite a lengthy watch!



Goodreads, basically, is its own social network and its media is books.

Discovery exercise:

• Visit Goodreads
• Take the tour
• Create a post and tell us how this site can be used for readers' advisory purposes, consider: how might customers find GoodReads useful?  What would library staff get out of this site?  Would you promote GoodReads to customers?  Why/why not?t

Your progress so far:
4 tasks down and 2 to go :-)

Where to now?
Week 5 : Music files and mp3s