Thing #11: LibraryThing

My favorite Thing so far! How awesome to be able to keep track of your books at home, but most of all, share them with others. That little YouTube video hit the nail on the head. It's a way for me to share the books I've read and how I felt about them with others as they do the same with me. I catalogued some of my books at home...couldn't do all of them, of course...that's a BIG project, and it was SO easy (especially what "cataloging" usually means to us librarians!) I loved to instantly be able to see how many other people have the same book I do, especially if it was a more obscure book than, let's say, Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer.

LibraryThing is a great way to network about books...like one big book club or book party. I'll use it to find suggestions for my next book, for sure. And here is the avenue for getting kids to share and talk about what they're reading. I used to have kids keep a list of the books they'd read over the course of the school year in the back of their journals. The reluctant readers were usually shocked and proud of themselves as they saw their lists grow. Wouldn't it be cool to have them keep track of that at LibraryThings? And the way it prompts them to dialogue about what they've read. Wow! I used to give students "talk time" after silent, sustained reading so that they could share their books with partners. This is even better.

So here are my questions:

1. What's involved in getting kids into this? I mean, what are the legalities of it? How would it ACTUALLY work? (I'm a big-picture person, so sometimes the details elude me.) What about parent permission to use it, and things like that?

2. Anybody out there worried that this is a government conspiracy to keep track of what people are reading? (Just kidding!)