Why you should have a Virtual bookshelf?

This is the second last post in this series that all dedicated to everything about books. To set the context of this series, the preface post was focused on pointing out the importance and benefits of Reading Habit and Books. In then next post, the tools that help you buy books were embossed out. In this post, I will talk about the tools will help you manage your library. The last will consists of my favorite Top 10 books and why are they my favorites.

 

Why you need to manage your Library

Did you ever thought how many books are published each year? Approximately 300000 books were published in year 2011.

Considering that a miniscule 0.1% of these books are relevant to you and you would want them to be in your library, you are talking about purchasing and managing 300 books. Remember this number is only for 1 year.

A few years back, we had only paper based books but now we have E-books too.

These numbers and facts give rise to 2 important questions.

 

1. Will I be able to purchase all the books that I liked?

Probably not. You might not have enough money to purchase all the books that you liked. So you will have to postpone your books purchase.

 

2. Will I be able to read all the books that I Purchased?

You might have purchased all the books but probably you will not have the time to read all the 300 publications.

So what do you do? You do not want to get boggled by these questions and give up your hobby of Reading and your aim of Building a library for yourself. Have a look at the preface post of these series that talked about “Why you should have a Library” to wade out any negative thoughts about books.

The answer lies in managing your library, your purchases, your wish list, what you have read, what you want to read next, prioritizing your reading…

 

Social Cataloguing tools : The answer

Thanks to Internet, there are many web based tools that are dedicated to help you with your Library Management. Following is the list of a few such services

• Anobii,
• FiledBy,
• Goodreads,
• Google Books My Library,
• LibraryThing,
• Shelfari,
• weRead

(source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cataloging_application)

Do a Google for “Social cataloging application” and you get various posts that have compared these services.

 

Shelfari : The virtual Bookshelf

It’s an Amazon powered service that lets you start adding books on an e-shelf under categories like I want to read, Reading, I have read etc. You can share your bookshelf on your site, on your blog and of course with your friends. You get to know what your friends are reading, join the communities to discuss about the books, authors. You can tag the books for easy retrieval, add your comments and reviews to the books.

These days everything has got a Social angle to it, why not have a social edge to your library also. Shelfari is the service that fulfills this social hunger for a library. 

I have used Google Books also but My personal favorite is “Shelfari”. The obvious reason is because its integrated with Amazon.com. I have been using it for some time now and feel its an amazing service. Have a look at my bookshelf to get a feel of the services. Lets gets connected on Shelfari, click here to access my Shelfari profile.

I hope this post has served the intended purpose and it helps you in getting hold of your Library. Do let me know your feedback about this post, your favorite social cataloging service using the comments sections…

Read this post to deep dive into these amazing World of Books that are published every year.

 

del.icio.us Tags: books,social,social cataloging,shelfari,library management,personal library,virtual bookshelf