Fun and Exciting Book Services
Enough with this “virtual world” nonsense. I love to see it when folks use the internet to push people back into the real world in new ways. Here are a couple of services I’ve recently discovered and taken great pleasure in:
The first is LibraryThing, a simple mechanism for listing the contents of your personal library online. By making use of open APIs provided by Amazon.com, Library of Congress, and others, they make it quite simple to add items to your collection, “tag” them into categories, and share with others.
Second: Commit random acts of literacy! Read & Release at BookCrossing!. The BookCrossing service provides an way of building community by sharing books. As a member, you are encouraged to place a simple bookplate with a numerical ID into books you leave laying around in bus stations and doctor’s offices. When someone picks up one of these books, they are implored to read, make a journal entry online for the book, and pass it along to a friend or stranger. I’ve just had my first release caught by a VT student, and it’s oddly thrilling… An old NPR interview.
–JA