LibraryThing /

Sign up and create your library

·  Go to the home page (http://www.librarything.com) and sign up – all you need is a username and password

·  Look at the very short introduction to get a feel for how LibraryThing works (http://www.librarything.com/quickstart.php)

·  Click on the ‘add books tab’ and try adding a few books (anything you like!) to your library. You can choose to search any cataloguing source – Amazon or a library. Add some tags.

Explore social cataloguing

·  Take a look at your library (‘Your library’ tab) and look at the LibraryThing record of one of the books you entered by clicking on its title.

·  Look at the social data down the middle of the page, the tags, recommendations and reviews.

·  Click through to find similar books from tags and recommendations. If you want something different, try the un-suggester (‘anti-recommendations’).

·  Explore the ‘buy, borrow or swap’ box on the right-hand side – try clicking through to OLIS via WorldCat.

·  Go to your profile page (‘your profile’ tab). Look in the ‘members with your books’ box on the right-hand side and take a look at some other people’s catalogues.

·  Go to the ‘tools’ tab and look at the options for creating widgets eg for websites or blogs..

·  If you’ve got a feed reader set up, try subscribing to the feed of new books either from your own library or someone else’s in your reader (the links can be found on the right-hand side of any profile page).

LibraryThing bells and whistles

·  Take a look at the zeitgeist pages (http://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist) and the interesting stats

·  Take a look at LibraryThing Local (‘Local’ tab at the top) and search for venues in Oxford. You can add libraries/bookshops as favourites by clicking on the star next to the name.

·  Explore the ‘legacy libraries’ (libraries of dead famous people) by clicking on the ‘stats’ link at the top of your profile page. On the right-hand side it will show you your overlap with legacy libraries such as Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson and Sylvia Plath. You can look at their libraries by clicking on their names.