Week 5, Thing 12 - Rolling past Rollyo

I've just gotten back to work after a brief vacation, and need to catch up with the program!

I looked around the Rollyo site, and can think of a number of situations that would make it very useful. If I were interested in a specific topic - a game, an author or celebrity, or cult movie, for example; some subject with a number of active sites that I might want to search repeatedly - it would be efficient to set up this kind of focused search tool.

One of my reciprocal reader's advisory and book-lending buddies (who was absolutely delighted when I let her know about Library Thing) does a fair amount of online reading, and would appreciate the e-books Rollyo that was shown as one of the examples in the Rollyo site, to help her find the kind of older, long-out-of-print titles she often ends up reading from a computer screen.

A teacher might also set up a Rollyo of useful sites for certain assignments to help manage the amount and quality of online information sources for younger students.

However, at this time I don't really have a need to set up a Rollyo, so I have not opened an account. There's too much else to do, both in the 23 Things program and the rest of my work life!

Vacation was great - Colorado, scotch, and haggis; can life get any better?

Week 5, Thing 11 - It's a Library Thing

I looked at LibraryThing and created an account. Cool. I could really spend some time playing with this! http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gumushlu

I added five titles from my home library, but was stymied by the various editions listed. I chose what might be closest to the books I have, but if I get serious about this, I'd have to check to see exactly what I've got. It was interesting to see that no one else had listed more than one of "my" titles, so I added a couple more (one of which I don't actually own), and did see that a few others had also listed two of my new list.

I like the links to authors' websites. Too bad most of the books I own are by dead people who are just not very digitally savvy. However, photos of 2/7 of my authors did appear, and I did know who was who in the photos.

It seems to me that the people most enthusiastic about Library Thing are probably more interested in "which edition"- type information; more librarian-y than I (though some people think I'm pretty librarian-y). The books that I own are often slightly worn "reader's copies," often "ex-lib" (now there's a real surprise!); titles that I'll want to reread and expect will not be readily available at a library - why keep something you can easily borrow? I already have a logical classification system, so don't need a new one. I already swap recommended titles and actual books with a number of people whose tastes are similar, so I'm not sure I need to find out what some stranger in Oregon likes to read just because he/ she owns several of the books I also own. But it's still fun to play with, and I've recommended it to one of my book-swapping buddies.