I love trying out anything new, especially new links or games. This time, I decided to try LibraryThing. This is a book website that is very similar in concept to Shelfari. Although I quite like Shelfari and use it to virtually catalogue all the books I have read and love, I would like to add the catalogue to this WordPress blog (an action that is not supported).
So, I was particularly curious to see whether there was something that I could do using LibraryThing. Well, turns out…not much really. WordPress just does not allow you to add Javascript whichever way you try. Finally, did some vague workarounds and ended up with this – (created a static image of my widget and added a hot link to the catalogue). Way too much trouble !
Anyway, until I can actually add widgets to my blog, I guess I have to remain contented with this.
Apart from all this widget brouhaha, here are my humble opinions on LibraryThing. It looks like a real, professional site for hard-core book lovers and bloggers. One neat concept is the early recommendation program – they provide electronic copies of unreleased books that you can download, read, and review. Veerry nice ! It appears that you can even request a book sent to you (but I think for that, you have to be an enthusiastic, popular book blogger living in the States). All three I am not 🙂 . I however like the Shelfari interface and the user experience to be much better.
haha – Blog newbies / freebies are always fun to try out! 🙂
BTW, the whole LibraryThing widget – I wonder how it worked with me… Will try to figure out and let you know..
Thanks … let me know if you find anything 🙂
Wandered in because WordPress told me there was a link to one of my posts from here. It turns out to be one of the “possibly related” offerings to posts about LibraryThing. 🙂
The Early Reviewer programme doesn’t require anything other than you sign up for it, and then request books from the selection available in your country — and while the bulk of the books are only available in the US, there have been quite a few available in a range of other countries. The algorithm used to select people to get review copies is mostly based on trying to find readers who are a a good match for the book based on what you already have in your LT catalogue. So having a large LT catalogue gives you an advantage, but you don’t need to be a well-known bookblogger to be in with a chance.
A bit late for you, but there’s a rather crude “random books from my LT” widget that does work on blogs that ban Javascript — more details here.
Yeah, I was going through your blog when I saw a reference to LibraryThing. Hmm…I must think of reviewing online books. Let’s see 🙂
Btw, I enjoyed going through your blog.