8. Play with LibraryThing

For this 'Thing', take a look at LibraryThing. Whether you are a librarian, publisher, bookseller or just a lover of reading, LibraryThing allows you to catalogue your own titles and find people with similar reading tastes.

There are thousands of books already listed on LibraryThing - in most cases, adding a book to your personal catalogue is as simple as inputting the title or ISBN.

LibraryThing also allows you to share your book collection with others and get book recommendations from other people with similar tastes. It doesn't make a difference if you have a large collection of books or just a handful of books.

It's also not just limited to new releases or best sellers - you can find interesting books you may never have otherwise picked up.

Your task

Take a look around LibraryThing and create an account so you can start your own library.
Add a few books to your library. These can be books you own or books you have read.
Blog about your findings and be sure to provide a link to your LibraryThing catalog!
Note: Your url should look like this: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/yourusername
If you are not sure, log into Library Thing and click on the 'Your Library' tab up the top. Copy the url that appears in the address bar.

Those who are feeling cheeky can try to add a Library Thing widget to the sidebar of their blog:

Log into Library Thing
Go to 'Tools'
Click on 'make a standard blog widget'
Use the prompts on screen to determine widget layout. This will generate the code that you can copy and paste into your blog.
Log into Blogger
Click on Dashboard
Click on Layout
Click 'Add a Gadget'
Find 'HTML/Javascript' and click the 'Add' button (which looks like a plus sign)
Give the element a title
Paste in the html code provided by the online app
Click on Save

LibraryThing on Wordpress

Alas, Wordpress users, the LibraryThing widget is not supported. However you can put a small image (a chiclet) in the sidebar of your blog which links to your LibraryThing Catalog: