Thing One and Thing Two

OK, so it's just Thing One, as in LibraryThing. But I had to use some sort of book-related title, right?*

Anyway, today's exploration required me to look at LibraryThing and create an account. I must admit, this was one of those things I really didn't want to do... I have an unexplained aversion to LibraryThing. I do have Books iRead on my FaceBook page (Thing Two?), which I enjoy, but on the other hand, I know there are several parts of iRead that I deliberately don't use. Perhaps it's because I work in a library and talk books most of the day, and therefore don't really care what random FB users think of whatever book I'm reading. I don't read reviews, I don't care about the average rating on my books (if I'm reading it already, why should I care how others rate it?), and I don't make use of their recommendations. I just list what I'm reading and assign stars when done. If nothing else, those covers look pretty on my profile. :-)

But in the spirit of this particular assignment, I did create a LibraryThing profile and stuck some books up -- enough for it to generate recommendations for me. I was curious what it would offer, given my somewhat eclectic reading tastes. It gave me recommendations that were just as eclectic... but there was one book that looked interesting. And several I had already read, but hadn’t put up on LT, so in that it did OK.

The social aspect of LT is, I think, its strength and its draw (and what pushes me away). I guess people like to show off how much they read, or start conversations about beloved authors with strangers that agree, or find places to talk about their love of books. LT seems to foster a sense of community.

That sense of community could be a great thing for the library to tap into, if we could figure out a good way how. The Bookbanter LibraryThing is a great start, and if we could link to it from our library website it might actually prove useful to patrons as well as staff. I could see encouraging our book discussion groups to continue their discussion online. We could create a group within LT or post a starting point for an online discussion. (See an example by the Fitchburg Public Library.) Again, we’d want to post a prominent link on our website to direct patrons this way. (Note: maybe we should have an easily-found section devoted to book discussions.)

Another thing that might be a nice way to use this resource (although, not being a computer-type I don’t know if it’s possible) would be to import things like the ratings or the tag clouds. Could the tags get tied to the cloud we’ll get in AquaBrowser? I suppose it’s a similar techonology.

If we can’t get stuff from LT into our catalog, maybe we could go the other way. I saw there were links to Amazon.com in each title record on LT ("Buy this book!"); maybe there would be a link in each title record to “search your local library”. The patron could put in a library system name, or their zip code, or their university name, and that would be remembered on their account and a permanent link to us (or whoever) could be added for them.

The last thing that occurred to me with LT was to start putting our library’s book-related events. I tried out the “Local" Search feature based on my home zip code. Someone’s putting in Montgomery County events (book discussions, etc.), and you can add them to your own calendar of events on your account. Maybe the individual(s) that are working on the BookBanter account, or our PR person, or an assigned person for each branch could add our events and book talks so that the local LT users could search them there... Especially if they were listed individually by branch and given location tags, so that people could search their town or zip code and just get local stuff, instead of things 25 or 30 miles away that they’d never travel to attend.


* “I will pick up the hook
You will see something new.
Two things. And I call them
Thing One and Thing Two.”
--The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss