Social Networking for Readers

You've been hearing all about social networking of late, often mixed in with semi-lucid ravings about Web 2.0 but perhaps, with all the enthusiasm around Facebook and the (poorly designed and very ugly) MySpace and the enraptured raving about the subtle joys of Twitter, you've felt a little left out, a solitary bibliophile in a sea of digital Philistines. Fear not; Web 2.0 has sites for the bibliophile (and even the bibliomanic) as well. A number of the sites for book lovers and book collectors are built around cataloging or listing books dand making it easy for members to share book lists, discuss books with each other, recommend books, and review them.

LibraryThing was the first site for book lovers that I discovered. It allows you to easily catalog your books, by clicking the titles you own in others libraries, or by searching databases of Amazon, and national libraries. A basic account is free, and lets you enter 200 books, as well as use the social aspects of the site. You can pay $10.00 for a year's membership and enter as many books as you like, or you can take the plunge and purchase a lifetime membership for $25.00. You have an option to keep your library private, or, like most members, you can make it public. You can "tag" your books, to categorize them, choose to display covers, and add reviews. It took the plunge and paid $15.00 for a CueCat barcode scanner, which makes entering books much much simpler. There are fairly straight forward mechanisms for importing and exporting your library as well. You can comment on other people's books and they can comment on yours, if you choose to allow it. There are also "Groups" which allow you to discuss all sorts of books and authors, as well as more spontaneous "Talk" threads. There are a lot of librarians on LibraryThing, and they've very much helped make this site a thriving community of readers. One of the really cool LibraryThing community projects is I See Dead People's Books—Library Thing catalogs of the books owned by people like Susan B. Anthony, Benjamin Franklin, and Marilyn Monroe, among others.

In some ways Shelfari is the inverse of LibraryThing; where LibraryThing emphasizes the cataloging aspect and thus makes the social aspects and book discussion secondary, Shelfari emphasizes the social networking between readers. Shelfari is a free site whose developers describe their mission as to "enhance the experience of reading by connecting readers in meaningful conversations about the published word." The basic concept is that you build a "virtual shelf" of your books, with the books arrayed cover forward. You can rate them, and you can link to "friends" and see their books and ratings. You can still create lists of your books, and organize them, and even tag them. Like LibraryThing, Shelfari reaches out to authors as well as readers, and they provide space for reviews, and ratings, discussion groups. Again, it's easy to export or import books. There's even a convenient mobile phone version of Shelfari here. Be cautious about uploading your address book; Shelfari will send an automated "invitation" for your friends to join the site; that's potentially very annoying. Since Shelfari were bought by Amazon in late 2008, it will be interesting to see how the site evolves.

GoodReads has no cataloging feature at all, though it does let you track what you've read and what you plan to read. GoodReads is very much about social networking, about linking to people you know, off or online, in order to offer and receive book recommendations, to rate, review and track what you've read (keep track of what you've read and what you'd like to read. It has features that are very specifically directed towards book clubs, as well as individuals, including a place for members to post their own writing. They've recently released a site for mobile phones here. Good Reads is designed to work with other more common social networking sites, and even includes a simple widget to reflect your Good Reads on your blog.

Readerville is very much about community, rather than networking. It's about reading and discussing books, and writers, and publishing. It's a pretty amazing site, and it's not quite like anything else that's out there. If you like books—genre fiction, literary novels, non-fiction, philosophy, poetry—any kind of book, you owe it to yourself to explore Readerville. It's a collection of blogs, and discussions, and book journals, and not easy to describe, but very much a strong, thriving community built around an active Weblog and a forum.

I should mention that Shelfari and GoodReads both offer Facebook applications, which will display data from your external account on your Facebook page, if you want. And if you're simply looking for a congenial place to hang out and talk books with smart people, I recommend the still new forum (not) Written in Stone as a congenial place to start a discussion on just about any kind of reading. Mind, as a co-owner, I'm biased, but it's free and small enough that you can help shape the community.