I had so much fun with the image generators that I had to go back and do it again. This is the view of Fenway from "The Voice of Fenway Park," Carl Beane's window. He's from my hometown and was gracious enough to give us a tour which I then had to turn into a puzzle with this assignment. Very cool!
I explored LibraryThing from the award winner list. I have said it before and I'll say it again, I just get overwhelmed by everything out there, so I liked the whole idea of a short list. (I even get overwhelmed in a large library. Boston Public sets my teeth on edge!) One reason I chose LibraryThing was that a cyber-colleague recently used it to rescue Marc records from a two year old backup CD of her collection. I expected to find a tool that made it simple to export records. I found a lot more than that.
LibraryThing allows a user to simply and easily catalog a personal collection of materials, get reviews, suggestions and anti-suggestions, and to join groups of those with similar interests - like Elementary School Librarians. It was as simple as ZMarc cataloging, and I did like the reviews and suggestions features. It is important to note that if I searched for suggestions based on a children's book title, I got all children's books back. Obviously, when I searched on a tag, I got a mix of children's and adult materials which would not be acceptable in an elementary school.
I could see this tool being used to introduce students to new materials, i.e., "read-alikes" and to reviews written by their peers. It is simple enough to use so that they could add titles to a school account and add their own reviews to the database so they are not just consumers of information. A big concern is that this looks like a tool mainly used by adults. It would be neat - and more useful - if there were a way to "partition" a children's area.
I have four K-5 elementary schools and it might be very fun to create a group on LibraryThing where the students could interact with each other in all my schools to see what they are reading and enjoying as well. Now if I can get my "other-half" to jump in with her four schools, then we could involve all eight of our schools. Something to think about.
Aside from school time, I can see some of my students cataloging their own libraries at home. I confess, when my dad brought home some Nancy Drew books from a defunct church library, I cataloged them - pockets, cards and all. They were some of the only books I owned as a child. I wasn't allowed to BUY books. I had to go to the library because I read too fast. Oh my gosh ... and look what I grew up to be!
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