Shelfari (instead of LibraryThing)

vs.


I am indeed what thing #11 suggested-a book lover. This is probably a good thing, considering a big chunk of the past 10 years have been spent practically immersed in a paper forest.

I feel like I went a little against the grain of the assignment again however. Much like my Flickr vs Picasa blog. Since I didn't really look ahead at the assignments, I had signed up for a Shelfari account about a month ago. It's basically the same thing as LibraryThing. The whole idea and concept of keeping a catalog or shelf of your books is awesome. This would have come in handy years ago when I first entered the paper forest and starting reading half of what passed through my hands (okay, not fully half, but a lot more than if I didn't work in a library, ya know?).

It's not easy to try and recall all the books I've read, and I alllmost started to feel like some of our friendly patrons who ask "Can you tell me if I've read this before?" It's all right there on the site now. I can add to it, find friends with the same reading interests, get reading suggestions, or give them. Pretty neat deal.

Now from just looking at LibraryThing and not really signing up and playing around with it, the differences between that site and Shelfari seem to be on the surface. I don't know who started first, but LibraryThing does seem to be a bit more "put together." A few more links, and a pretty strong "buzz page" which they claim: "If the buzz page doesn't convince you, you cannot be convinced. Go away."

Based on my what I know (admittedly again, I don't know that much about the site) the only thing that puts Shelfari over LibraryThing is it's use of color. I'm sorry, that's the Illustrator in me. I find Sheflari more visually pleasing. And I invited a bunch of friends to join, so I can't jump ship just yet.

Either way, both sites are great ways to keep track of stuff. And great tools to expand literary horizons.