Booklikes is not very userfriendly. It took me a while to learn how to navigate it and create a bookshelf. There was not a help feature. Once I found the book catalog, it was a little easier finding books that I'm interested in reading. Not all books had summaries, however, so that was a drawback. I did like the timeline feature so I can read what the latest recommendations are.
Biblionasium is a wonderful site for teachers and parents to use. Teachers can create reading groups for their classes, create reading lists and create reading challenges. Students can log their independent reading levels and win virtual prizes. There is also a template for a parent letter. This site isn't very user friendly. Again, I had to play around with it before finding the book recommendations. Before that, I had to search for each book by title or author. I also didn't like that when I clicked on a book on the recommendations page, they were automaticlly
Shelfari is by Amazon.com. I have an Amazon account and was given the option to add the books that I had purchased. The interface of this site isn't as eyecatching as the others, but the site is easy to use. Finding books was pretty simple. There were several options featured, by subject, most popular. I liked the most popular because it helps me choose YA books for the library.
Goodreads is by far my favorite. The website is very easy to use. I was able to locate friends from social media and have already received book suggestions from them. I would recommend this site to parents who are looking for book suggestions and reviews. I will also have my other two librarians create accounts so they explore the site and look for books for their libraries.
LibraryThing was not very user friendly. It was helpful that I could import my shelf from Goodreads, but its recommendation page was not as useful. There was no way to search my genre or other features. It was another site which I had to play around with before I learned how to create a shelf or navigate.
I will continue to use Goodreads. It was the most beneficial for my both personally and professionally. I will introduce Biblionasium to the teachers in my district. We have been looking for an alternative to Accelerated Reading and I think this may be it.
I read on like three blogs that Shelfari allowed the books purchased from Amazon to upload to the shelves right a way. I like Shelfari, but I think I uploaded the books one at a time. I know Goodreads did allowed me to do that. I'm going back to check on that........
ReplyDeleteGreat call on using Biblionasium instead of AR. If we have to, we have to. But if your district is willing to be more dynamic in this area, that is wonderful!
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