Online Book Communities

Online Book Communities

This week I explored a few different online book communities trying to discover the one that I felt the most comfortable with and could use with students and teachers. Online book communities are online sites were you can create an account and then add books to different lists or shelves. For example you can create a “book shelf” for books you have read and would recommend to students or others, or your shelf could be for books you would like to read. When I was creating shelves on different sites I created a book shelf for the new Bluebonnet books that were just released so I could keep track of them and I also created a shelf for books that are great for read alouds and are helpful to teachers who are looking for a book to read aloud to help teach a skill. I explored Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari, Booklikes, and Biblionasium. All of them can store books on a shelf but as you read below, I preferred some more than others. I will most definitely be using Biblionasium in my library with all the classes!

 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/

This was a very user friendly site. I was able to easily add two new book shelves easily and then put books on the shelf I wanted. This site also offered great recommendations. Once you start putting books on the shelves it will give you recommendations for similar books you might like. This site was one of the easiest to put books on the shelf. Goodreads also proved the reader with great book summaries and reviews along with sites where you can purchase the book or even Libraries that have the book. Another nice feature that Goodreads provides is if the book is part of a book list it will provide you with the list. For example one of the books I selected to put on one of my shelves was “The Lion and the Mouse” by Jerry Pinkney which is a Caldecott Medal Winner so it provided me with the list of other winners. I think that is a great feature to have. While I think this site is very useful for adults and I will personally use it I feel that it is not student friendly as some of the others and will probably not use it in the library.

 

 

 

Library Thing:  http://www.librarything.com

Out of all five sites that I was exploring I feel that this one was my least favorite. It was not very visually appealing as the others. There were still a lot of positives with this site. It was easy to add books to my shelf although on this site they do not call them shelves, they are called collections. I did enjoy their tag feature. You can click on a book and if there are others books that have the same tag you can find books that are similar. For example one of the books I added to a collection was the wordless book “Chalk” and it had a tag wordless book and so when I clicked on it the site provided me with a list of other wordless books. This feature is very similar to adding a hash tag to a post or picture. It was very helpful when I was searching for books to add to my collection. Overall it was a useful site and not hard to manage but just not as appealing tome as the others.

 

 

Shelfari: http://www.shelfari.com/

Shelfari is a book community that is established through amazon.com. I found this site to also be very user friendly and very visually appealing. I like the shelf view and how they display the book covers. They give you several choices about how to display the books. Once you have books on your shelf, it is easy to edit them and I liked that feature. You can make the book as planning to read, reading now, or read it. You can also mark a book as your favorite and add to a wish list. The books are also easy to rate once you have read them. Once you click on a title you can read the description and read reviews from other readers. Being a product of amazon you can also purchase the book easily. I think that I will use this site for personal use but still not quite right to use with my students in the library.

 

BookLikes: http://booklikes.com

This site to me is very similar to Library Thing. I found it to be very user friendly but just not as much as the other sites. I was able to add books to my shelf but when I wanted to know more about a certain book it did not provide me with a lot of information except for reviews from other readers. I was also a little annoyed that when I did a search for a book and would find what I was looking for but also saw another book I was interested in I could only add one book at a time and each time I would have to type the search criteria in the search bar. It also opens a new window each time you click on a book. I did like the way that the books were displayed with the book covers. I feel that is was not as user frieldy as the rest and will most likely choose another online book community to “shelf” my books.

 

 

 

 

 

Biblionasium: https://www.biblionasium.com

I am so excited about this site and cannot wait to share it with all my teachers and the students! This is a wonderful site and perfect for the classroom or the library! Biblionasium is very visually appealing and kid friendly. I found it to be very easy to use and something that my teachers can easily jump in and start using right away. There are so many interesting parts to this site. You are able to build reading lists, the kids can log their reading time and it offers reading challenges that you can have your class work on. It also provides a really fun and kid friendly home page with book talks, did you know section and fun and interesting articles. This site also provides parents with a way to view what their child is reading and check on how many minutes they have logged. There are also news articles and other resources for parents and teachers. They provide book lists and activities for children. Under the tab “My Books” is where you will find your book shelf. You can create different book shelves for different lists. The book shelves are very visually appealing and fun to look at because they look like real book shelves and the book covers look great. When you click on each book it will give you the book summary, a place for reviews, you can send recommendations, a link to amazon.com where you can purchase the book and the book’s reading level. When you are searching for books to add to your shelf the search will display the book you are looking for and others by the same author or subject. The only down side is that it won’t let you add more than one book at a time. You have to click on each book to then add to your shelf and then go back to your search results. This one flaw doesn’t have me bothered though because of all the other awesome things that this site can do and provide. I highly recommend it to all reading teachers and librarians.