Week 4

Assignment 1

I've had a Goodreads account for close to a year now and have enjoyed adding books to my shelves. I have 544 books on there interspersed throughout 28 shelves. In the past, I usually kept a Microsoft Word document of all the books I had read, but I've found Goodreads to be much easier and quicker to use. For instance, I've been recently reading all of the Caldecott medal and honor books, and it's been so effortless to keep track of which ones I have read through Goodreads. I also know that if I ever need to bring up a title I have read, but do not remember the name or author of the book, I can simply look through my shelves. I think this is where Goodreads can excel as a tool for librarians. I simply can't remember all the titles I have read, but being able to go to my shelves to jog my memory helps tremendously during readers' advisory. Some interesting features that I'd like to note about Goodreads are the following:

• The shelf cloud feature: This visually represents your shelves and shows which ones contain the most books, which is useful for determining the genres in which I need to read more!
• The most read authors feature: Shakespeare was #2 on my list, with Ann Rinaldi coming in at #1!
• The stats feature: This provides an interesting tool where you can see the longest book you have read in each year- a 743 page library science textbook topped the list for me in 2012
• The fun page with trivia and quizzes: This is a good way to kill time, have fun, and learn in the process!

I have not looked into the groups feature yet, but I plan on exploring this more in-depth. I like that the explore page has lists for recent award winners and books that are popular this week, and gives a debut author snapshot. Overall, I think the Goodreads site has a myriad of useful features and is quite user-friendly.

Finally, I recommended Behind the Palace Doors: Five Centuries of Sex, Adventure, Vice, Treachery, and Folly from Royal Britain by Michael Farquhar to Lisa Dibbern based off of her love of non-fiction books (I also noticed she was currently reading Literary Rogues, and Behind the Palace Doors is a similar concept, but focused on the scandalous lives of British kings and queens rather than of authors).