LibraryThing

I've been very curious about LibraryThing, stumbling across links to it in various places, but hadn't quite got round to finding out exactly what it was. Overall, I think it's quite exciting and I do like the idea of it. I felt slightly geeky creating catalogue records for my own books, but I was impressed by how easy it was to use and I do like the social aspects behind it all. It's a great place to discover new books and find recommendations that correspond to your own interests and reading history. I also like the idea of the Local part of the site, as a way of finding out about talks and events (although at the moment I'm being told about events in Cambridge, MA-will have to sort that out!). I love seeing the book covers-it makes my list of books far more colourful and interesting.

My LibraryThing

I think there is great potential for libraries to use LibraryThing. I love the idea of using a LibraryThing widget to display new books on the library website. Currently I post up a list of new accessions every month to the website-it's usually quite long, but it'd be interesting to see whether a few titles across different subjects could be picked out and feature more prominently on the website via the LibraryThing widget. It'd certainly be nice to add some colour with the book cover images. It might also have potential use as a new addition to the website in connection with our special collections. For example we have a separate collection of books that are written by College alumni which we like to promote through special displays. It would be nice to generate wider knowledge and interest in these, and the LibraryThing format might work nicely for this, producing a list of the titles that would be easily viewable.

As for incorporating LibraryThing tags and recommendations into the library OPAC, I have mixed feelings. In an academic environment, students are given reading lists so are fairly focused in what they need to search for, so I'm not really sure how useful recommendations are. I suppose it could be of some use as a time-saving device if it suggests other books on a reading list, thus saving students the time of searching for it and they can just click on a link instead. It could also be useful for dissertations etc where students have more freedom in finding reading material because it might bring up titles that students wouldn't have searched for themselves. I like the fact that the LibraryThing widget could be integrated easily into the record display, but that it could also be clearly differentiated from the OPAC itself.

Again the tag issue arises. The tags people attach to their books are going to be very subjective, with lots of topic and genre descriptions that relate to the personal meaning that the individual got from the book. Maybe that does help generate more refined distinctions, and it certainly does make sense for the person building their library to draw connections and themes between their books that suits their needs, but how useful is it on an OPAC? The article LibraryThing and the Library Catalog was thoroughly interesting, but I'm still not entirely sure how much user-generated content can enhance the value of the OPAC. Maybe I just need to try it out a bit more to experience the benefits? I'm certainly keeping an open mind!