23 Things Week 14: Library Thing, etc

I have had a Shelfari account for a little while and plan to explore it more fully this summer when I have more time.  I like the look of Shelfari and would love to add a Shelfari bookshelf (or something similar) to my school library webpage to show new books or to highlight the books chosen each year for my Battle of the Books program. I think students would be drawn to explore the bookshelf with its cover images much more than they are drawn to read a mere list of books.  I haven't figured out a way to make it work smoothly with TeacherWeb, at least not as smoothly as I would like it.

I still have some reservations about advertising, and linking to this kind of social media on an elementary school website although I can certainly see the value of Shelfari or LibraryThing for a public library or a school library serving older students.

I joined a group that discusses literature appropriate for middle school, and hope to get some good ideas for collection development.  I don't anticipate using and of these sites to record my own personal reading.  I would much rather be reading another book than spending valuable time listing, tagging, or writing yet another review to be posted on one of these sites.