Online Book Communities

Connecting with others through books I read...

What book do I read?"

"How do I know if that book is any good?"

"I wonder what other kids my age are reading."

"Why should I read that book? What are kids saying about it?"

These questions flood my mind when I consider reading anything, especially books.  The experience of interacting about reading anything while engaging in a book chat at the local coffee shop is now amplified by online book communities.  Imagine reading, sharing, talking, and interacting with millions of people about books that you've read, have, want to read, or are reading.  Online book communities enable any reader to partake of these activities.  There are three that I will discuss here are Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Biblionasium.

Goodreads 

The first online community I came across, by other librarian recommendation nonetheless, not only recommends books, which gives you a starting point, but also allows you to create a book shelf with books on your own. These could be books you've read, want to read, have been recommended to you, or books you are currently reading. It also establishes a means of community.  It allows you to see what other people are reading, how books are rated, you can join any group based on your interest, browse collections, and even ask the author or take a quiz on a book! This is a book shelf I created on books I'd like to read.  After I updated my interface with a few books I had already red, Goodreads provided some recommendations. It's a great online community site. 

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is an online community used to catalog books you have, want to read, are reading, or recommend.  It is great for a classroom library, personal use, or virtual tracking of your reading habits. This community is fairly similar to Goodreads.  It also has options to talk about books and interacting with other people about books.  It uses tags and presents them in different sized fonts, the bigger the font, the more relevant the topic is to the book.  This helps refine your search, book choices, and groups.  I also like that it has the capability to provide local events related to your book choices, places to buy or read books, or events you may want to attend.  Aside from interacting online, it helps keep track of a classroom library. You can document which books you've lent out and when you receive books. It's incredibly practical that way. Also, students can submit work, book reviews, and poetry based on the books they've read. I like the way this one looks.  The interface is nice and it's user friendly for adults, parents, students, or anyone at any stage of their reading journey.

BookLikes

Booklikes is a blog-based website where you can do keep track of your reading journey, very much like Goodreads and LibraryThing. However, Booklikes allows you to share your thoughts, book reviews, and other things through a blog.  When you first log on and set up your account, you see this screen.  All other blogs you will read depend on what you select on this screen. 

Then, you are prompted to select what you want to do with booklikes.  You can share, collect and organize your books, and/or keep track of your reading.

I've uploaded 25 books that I've read.  If you look at the left panel, you can see that you have several shelves.  You can add one and name it yourself, or file your selections. I've filed my selections under "read".  All the books I've filed are ones I have read.

Booklikes is a fun way to interact with a community and create a blog with anything you like. 

Biblionasium

Biblionasium is a private-type of library and a teacher, students, and parent's dream come true when it comes to reading.  There are three types of accounts that can be created: educator, student, and parent.

As a teacher, Biblionasium is an excellent tool that provides tracking for your students.  It's a more private online community.  This is something that teachers can use to provide reading lists, make recommendations, and enable student partake of participation through a controlled environment. You do need a school email and the account needs verification.  Once you set up, you see the following screens:

It provides hints to manage your account, groups, students, parents, and book shelves. Biblionasium enables the teacher, student, and parent to have some requirement about what students want to read or what they should be challenged to read.

Teachers can also add students one at a time or in bulk.

Teachers can create reports and have data and the students' reading progress.

As students, kids can provide reviews of books they've read, share their collection through their shelf, and observe or browse through their peers' shelves for recommendations and inspiration.  And parents can monitor and be involved in their child's reading experience. It's aesthetically more user friendly and less overwhelming for students.

Goodreads, LibraryThing, booklikes, and Biblionasium are all excellent avenues to interact with the reading community for different perspectives and reasons. They all encourage reading, interaction, and personal growth as a reader.  Some also present a level of accountability to other parties. My personal favorites are LibraryThing and Biblionasium. I strongly believe that students can use this at any point of their reading journey, whether they're starting small or are avid readers.  Biblionasium is an excellent tool to connect students and parents to what the teacher or librarian is trying to accomplish: to foster an independent and self-perpetuating love of reading.