LibraryThing.com and Education

I enjoyed playing around with the LibraryThing.com website and can see how this sort of collective intelligence can create a sense of ownership between the patrons and their library collection. This kind of buy-in, using tagging, reviews, etc… would create a very easy way to do a mapping of the materials in a library collection and help find what genres your patron’s enjoy and what genres your collection may be in need of when it comes time to add new materials to the collection. I can see that this type of collective intelligence would have been very inticing for the 3rd grades students in my classroom to use this year. It gets them involved and the time flies when you are tagging and reading other people’s reviews. I can see how this could help strengthen my students reading and writing skills by adding that oftentimes needed motivation to do the work or go above and beyond what is required for a class.