LibraryThing

Library Thing is the World's Largest Book Club. It is available in many languages. In addition, Library Thing lets you catalog all the books you own and use tags to organize your collection. The tags are self generated and can be as obscure as “Susie might like this” or as common as “To read.” While Library Thing links users with common books and “tags,” much of the sites interface is designed for familiarity in personal organization. The interface is based on traditional library catalogs. Library Thing is free up to 200 books and then is $10/year or $25/lifetime.

Goodreads serves a similar mission but is considered by some to be the more mainstream of these two largest book cataloging sites. Unlike LibraryThing which was created by librarians and transitioned later into public use, Goodreads was developed exclusively and originally for public use. As a result, the interface takes its cue from mainstream social networking sites and prominently features updates and reviews from “friends.” Goodreads is a free service which is supported by ad revenue.

These social networking sites are exclusively designed to track and aid learning pursuits, and consequently serve a unique niche within the educational community. Using these sites, educators can encourage students to choose and track resources based on the recommendations of peers with similar interests. Assignments like book reports may be completed using the review function.
 * Uses in Education:**

 §  Encourages students to actively participate in selecting, evaluating, and using resources.  §  Students are able to access the learning pursuits of their friends in a non threatening setting.
 * Advantages of social networking in education:**

 §  Must be closely monitored to ensure that objectionable or unsafe material is not included.  §  Open structure may be overwhelming to disabled students. Please visit Ashley Baker’s CMS course structure in Moodle (Information Literacy for the Lifelong Learner (Baker) to see one applied use example of this social networking technology.
 * Disadvantages of social networking in education:**

**Good Resources:** [] [|http://www.goodreads.com]