LibraryThing

I've spent an enjoyable part-afternoon exploring LibraryThing on behalf of the Wolfson Contemporary Reading Group (or WCRG as it's known). We have a (fairly dull) website, which includes list of all the books we've discussed since the Group started in 2005, but I'm still asked quite regularly what sort of thing we read, or by regulars for a reminder of what we've read, so this is another way to collate the information.

So far I've just added the books we read this academic year, with the tag '2009-10', but I'll add the back lists in due course. The next step will be to add an email address to the profile so I can generate a Developer key and embed links and images into the WCRG page on the College website. In the meantime I've used an individual cover image for our next book, Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna to spice things up a little (cf. also the image for the current Lee Library 'Book of the Month' which also looks the better for some colour; next stop cover images for our New accessions RSS feed, which I presume will require a bit more technical know-how! I'm hoping though it'll be possible once Aquabrowser is live...). So, more anon on the embedding side, but this is a start.

The real value of LibraryThing though would as a repository for comments and reviews, both by individual WCRG members and the Group as a whole (a good source of reference when the lucky 'volunteer' comes to write up the year's meetings for the college magazine...?). The challenge there though will be persuading people to use the site, and then to contribute. I suspect there won' t be a mad rush. Most of our members are busy people, and I myself am often guilty of speed-reading the final sections of a book minutes before the meeting. Still, if only a couple of champions cotton on, we'll have a more dynamic facility than we have now.

[Let's hope they're more efficient than I am at maintaining this blog...]