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Book-lovers’ hubs: Shelfari vs. Library Thing
March 2, 2007 | 1:40 am
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By David Rothman
Has anyone noticed how closely the new Amazon-backed Shelfari service overlaps with LibraryThing? You can even import lists from LT and other services.
And as with similar services, e-books could be most promising—imagine being able to call up almost immediately the books that your friends love. Maybe some kind of legal file-sharing could even be worked out; in fact, I’d be shocked if Amazon weren’t already investigating such possibilities.
Meanwhile here’s a Shelfari summary from MediaBistro:
The Shelfari content model is pretty simple: Users of the “interactive social media site for book lovers” set up a homepage listing their favorite titles, with links to their reviews, and then they can browse around and see who else loves those stories, what other books those people recommend, what their friends are reading, stuff like that. This morning, the company announced that the completion of its Series A financing with significant investment from Amazon.com, among other investors. “In a short period of time, Shelfari has succeeded in building a vibrant community around the experience of reading, and we are pleased to support them in their efforts,” said Amazon books VP Greg Greeley. The online retailer has also put the director of its books and magazine store, Stefan Pepe, on the Shelfari board of directors.
Question: So what’s the role of public libraries if private companies expand even more deeply into interactivity—having already, as in Google’s case, broken into such areas as scanning and search?
(Spotted via Peter Brantley.)
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Comments:
I live in an urban neighborhood just south of downtown Dallas. Here, the public libraries are a huge traffic center. Teens wait in line to access a computer for homework or on-line chatting. Moms check out books on pregnancy and child-rearing. Men research the building code and take English as a Second Language classes. The library provides both computers and WiFi (for those of us who bring along our Pocket PCs).
In my neighborhood, at least, the public library is doing its job.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Good points, short term, Rob. But how about the future when e-book-friendly computers and WiFi are cheaper and people have ‘em at home? And when people are more accustomed to the Net than now? The poor and the less educated need libraries, yes, and I hope they’ll be there in the future–for all income groups. Anyway it’s great to see a publisher who understands the synergy between libraries and his business. Thanks. David
Maybe instead of seeing library on my property tax bill, I’ll see “community center.”
It is hard to know what the future holds for brick and mortar libraries. I’ve always thought that their survival depends upon being a true value to the local community, and in the traditional library sense to focus on the acquisition, archiving and digitizing of truly local/community content. There’s no reason for a local library of the future to “hold” copies of the same ebooks “held” by other libraries, but rather to be a portal to some central repository. But they can specialize in local content, and make that available to the world.
Libraries as cooperative purchasing projects for the public will last as long as we want such a thing. Perhaps the day will come when most content is digital and digital rights are such that public libraries become passe. Right now, though, libraries seem to be growing and adapting nicely. Commercial co-opting of public library service is always imminent yet remains in the future. Google hasn’t closed our doors yet.
My library is a very busy community center. It is also a place where people can go and hang out (after school, work, etc). Now that interlibrary loan makes it possible to obtain almost anything from any library (even from those outside the city library system), being well stocked has been less important than providing assistance to patrons (for research, finding a job, etc). Many people go there for internet access also.
My city library has a “job search kiosk” where patrons can find Houston jobs (from the Houston Chronicle classifieds) and print out jobs they like. That is also heavily used.
Rob’s question answers itself: libraries are public, they’re free for everyone. For that reason I hope that they’re around for a while, because who knows what motives lurk under any corporate PR? Less diabolical: when will a corporation’s free services become pay, etc.
LexusNexus has been setting the standard in data storage and search for a long time, so in that sense the future you wonder about is already here.
You could import from LibraryThing to Shelfair.
Could is the operative word.
You could if it worked. It doesn’t.
So, it is basically useless from that point of view. Manual book adding worked.
Anobii however imported the LT list, but ONLY those books with ISBNs. However, it did import tags. However, the website moves somewhere between snail and glacier, so haven’t been able to check anything else out as to whether it did reviews, etc.
This looks like it would be a Shelfari problem too. If no ISBN, it doesn’t exist (or no listing at Amazon, away.)
So, Anobii perhaps useful backup of sorts, Shelfari was no use at all.
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