Online Book Communities

There are various means to "shelve" and share book collections.  It can be used to display a proposed reading list or a recommendation of sort.  Here are a few online book communities that I have had a chance to play with along with my recommendations.

Goodreads

This online book community is really easy to work with.  You can get a synopsis of each book by clicking on the picture.  It is also tied to Barnes and Noble as well as a large assortment of other vendors.   This would be a good way for a group of people to keep up with what others are reading and their recommendations of the books each read.  Students would be able to use this as a classroom project, however most school districts will block this sight from their districts. 

Library Thing

This online book community is easy to use as well.  It seems a little better to view as compared to Goodreads.  It is easy to add books, but you can only do it one at a time.  You can add tags to the books.  Users can use change the amount of columns per page as well as the size of the book covers.  The book shelves can be arranged by authors, series, Melvil Decimal System and Lexile Measures. 

Shelfari

This was by far my favorite.  This tool is user friendly and visually appealing.  You can add followers via Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or Yahoo.    Users can import book lists as well as export book lists.  Users can establish groups as well.  This would be great to use the classrooms. 

Booklikes

Again, this is an easy program to use.  There is a drop down menu that is linked to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, as well as other book stores to check the price of the book selection.  It is also user friendly to add books and sort them from add date, read date, author, title and rating.  I love that you can add your shelf to a blog.  I don't like that font size is really small. 

Biblionasium

This seemed like the most appropriate tool to use for elementary age children.  It is very colorful and simple.  The books can be organized by displaying all books, favorites, recommended, required and classroom wish list.  Teachers and/or parents can even run reports on books read.  What I did not like about this tool was that there were a lot of books that I did not have access to, so I would have to enter one manually.  There were not any links to the book stores like Barnes and Noble or Amazon.