Online Book Communities

         A community is simple terms are a variety of people coming together for a specific cause.  We have professional learning communities, neighborhood communities, communities for single parents, the list goes on and on.  One type of community that has been flourishing since the advances in technology are online book communities.  Online book communities give people from all areas and walks of life a chance to share what they are reading, review books they have read, and find new books to read.  In this digital age there are more online book communities than one knows what to do with.  I have become a member of 5 different online book communities and will share my thoughts and feelings about each one with you.  My hope is that this will allow you to make a choice and join an online book community today.

       One of the most widely used book communities is Goodreads.com.  I have always been a fan of using Goodreads when considering to purchase a new book or using a book in the classroom.  The reviews for the most part are well thought out and really aid in my selections.  The Goodreads book community takes a little practice and wandering around to get started but once you have it, it is fantastic.  Goodreads allows you to create as many shelves as you want to organize your books.  It makes a plethora of recommendations based off of books you have already read.  This is one of my favorite aspects of Goodreads.  I do feel that Goodreads is definitely more geared to the adult reader and is not too user friendly for a teen.

The second book community I joined was librarything.com.  Librarything has every component that Goodreads does but is definitely more difficult to use.  One of my biggest disappointments with this book community is the blandness of the profile page.  It seemed way more basic than Goodreads and just did not appeal to me as much.  I did like the easy search box in the top right corner that allows someone to search through my books to see if I have read, reviewed, or recommended a specific book or author.

My next book community is shelfari.com.  Shelfari is a great community that takes no time to set up.  I love the way your added books sit on a customized shelf (mine is rosewood) across the top part of your profile page.  It is an extremely easy way to scroll through the books someone is reading or has read.  My only quaff is that adding other shelves is not as easy as it is on other sites.  With that said, Shelfari is one of the most appealing to look at.

My last online book community happens to be my favorite, Booklikes.com!  Booklikes has it all.  It is user friendly and has great visual appeal.  As you can see in the image below the graphic design is simple but gives you all of the most relevant information.  I love that it shows each book cover and just by scrolling over it you can see the most prevalent information about the book.  On the left side is the listing of your created shelves and how many books fall in each category.  I plan on using Booklikes from here on out and have even gotten my mother to join me in this book community.

 

BONUS

I also created an account at Biblionasium.com.  This is a wonderful site that is for teachers.  Teachers can set up an account at Biblionasium and add books that are favorites of theirs, required readings, and recommendations.  Once they have done this, they then add their students into the class group.  Students can now get onto Biblionasium and become active in the online book community.  Once students have read books off of any of the categories they can post their own reviews of the book.  This is a great way to get students actively thinking about what they are reading.  In addition parents can also access the site and stay on top of what books their child should be reading or are great ideas too read.