Mar 29, 2016

Library Thing


Have you ever read a few pages of a book only to remember that you already read it?  Or how about a book series you like so much you want to make sure you read every one? And classroom teachers, would you like to easily catalog all of your classroom library books? 

Well, LibraryThing is a great tool for doing all of the above.  You can sign up for a free account and easily add the books that you read by searching the title, author, or ISBN of the book.  The LibraryThing search engine uses Amazon as its main source.  Your search results will more than likely show more than one result for your search.  If you find the book you've read, just click on it, and it is automatically added to your library and catalogued in many ways.  From there, you can add your own tags, give the book your own personal rating, and add a review. You can see book reviews and ratings written by other readers, you can view the author's page, and you can see other works by the same authors.  If the book is part of a series, you can also view the series page, and every book that you have read in the series will automatically have a checkmark placed next to it.  Additionally, LibraryThing will also give you a list of other suggested books to read.  According to LibraryThing, they describe this tool as a "Book Geekery."

There is also a free app that enables you to add books to your library in the same way, but it also allows you to scan the bar codes on books and have them automatically added and catalogued into your library.  Cool, isn't it?

LibraryThing is free to catalogue your first 200 books.  After that, it is $10 a year or $25 for a lifetime membership.  I was introduced to LibraryThing by another teacher, and she uses LibraryThing to catalogue her extensive classroom library.  I use LibraryThing for keeping track of the books I read, and I especially like keeping track of the books in a series I have read.  I also like to use LibraryThing to see what other books my favorite authors have written. Within LibraryThing, you can join online book groups for some social networking if you'd like to do that too. 

I have been a member since the summer of 2011, and so far I have read and catalogued almost 300 books! There are many other ways people use LibraryThing, and you can read about those ways on the site. You are probably thinking about the different ways you can use LibraryThing right now as you are reading this!

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