Thing 54: Bookjetty - your books, your libraries!

Back in Learning 2.0 you looked at LibraryThing at Task 11. While LibraryThing is going from strength to strength, these days there are other similar sites that you can use to catalogue your own library, list books you want to own or read or review books. Such sites include Booktagger, Shelfari and Goodreads. Several applications are also available on Facebook, such as iread and Visual Bookshelf. It seems that everyone wants to help people with their books.

In Thing 54, we are going to focus on a book site with a difference! Bookjetty is a Singapore-based site where people can catalogue their own books and list things they are reading, have read or want. You can review books, tag them, rate them and add a widget to your blog. But here’s the difference: if you want an item, you can be linked to Amazon to purchase it AND you can search library catalogues! There are links to over 300 library catalogues worldwide. The search there gives you the call number, and a quick click on that takes you to the library catalogue where you can see if the item is available and reserve it! How cool is that!

You can see Polyxena’s Bookjetty books here and check out the Bookjetty widget on the blog Hecuba’s story here as well as Polyxena's page on the Boroondara Learning 2.1 ning. You can also search our catalogue, the City of Boroondara Library Service catalogue, on Bookjetty if you select that library.



Discovery exercise

1. Set up a free account with Bookjetty and look around on the site

2. Identify and set up local libraries that you would like to search

3. Catalogue a minimum of six books making some of them books wanted, some books read

4. Install the Bookjetty widget on your blog so that you (and others) have access there.

5. Blog about the experience and how you found the tool.