Sims Learning Connections

I became a Shelfari member back in November prompted by an invite from a very close colleague. Last week I finally got around to taking the next step of entering some of my books – have a look. Taking this next step was prompted in-part by recently being ‘friended’ by another colleague.

Meanwhile, I had discovered LibraryThing over a year ago while researching this post. I had considered jumping in then with one of these services; however, three points caused me to hold off in February 2007:

1. The task of entering several hundred books seemed daunting
2. I wasn’t sure which service I should invest in and I feared (without taking the time to adequately research) that the switching cost to change from one to the other, or some other service yet, would be painful…as in reentering books and meta-data one-by-one all over again
3. But mostly, there just wasn’t a compelling problem to solve for me. I was getting along fine with my hard-copy bookshelves being loosely organized by topic and depending on mailing lists, my blog buddies, and amazon.com reviews for guidances on what to read buy next.

Side note: The above is an example of what I had in mind when I wrote Motivation for Technology Adoption. Referring to that post…

• Motivation #1 (real problem to solve) just wasn’t compelling for me
  
• Also failed on motivation #2 (easier than alternatives), at least when thinking of the primary use cases as being “cataloging my bookshelf” or “book recommendations” — more recently this strengthened as I gave more value to another two use case: “self-marketing and positioning for employment search;” further signaling my interests and potential expertise by sharing what books I own, and making some pocket change to support my book habit
• I knew about about at least the two services, but I really didn’t see the benefit for me personally (failure on motivation #3)
• Ah, so it was motivation #4 (peer-pressure) that finally did hook me
• Motivation #5 (executive support) didn’t apply in this case, and I’d know enough about either solution or company to have an opinion on “fit with my values” (motivation #6), although by the end of writing this “first impressions” post I’m starting to develop one.
  
• Alas, having a bit more time on my hands at this moment compared to a year ago, I also now got hooked by #7 (it is just cool)
  
• The case for motivations #8 and #9 (variations on helping others) was pretty weak, unless I saw myself getting really serious about writing book reviews and making recommendations
• Finally, motivation #10 (personal request) applied at least weakly with the initial request to join Shelfari from my close colleague.

All and all, weak motivation a year ago, but then strengthened enough to get first action from me in November, and obviously again last week when I went “full in” to write this post.

At least the first two of my cause-for-pause were misguided apprehension. Regarding #1 above, last week I entered my first 100 books in less than two hours and this included substantial time to physically pull a handful of books off the shelf and bring them over to my computer desk, enter the data, and then physically return for the next stack. In hindsight, I should have fired up the laptop with wireless and taken the computer to the books versus books to computer. Although as a book lover, the experience of physically going through the books was a bit of a delight…as if rediscovering old friends at the pub (like I get out to pubs anymore?) With Shelfari, I found it quickest to enter one word from the title and one name from the author. I could type words straight from the cover much faster than finding the ISBN and keying that in.

On to #2…As mentioned in the opening, I started with Shelfari due to influence by my colleagues; but once I jumped in for real last week, I felt guilty that I hadn’t done my more typical shop-around, analyze, and test drive before commitment to a new application. So, over to LibraryThing after all. Fortunately Shelfari has export functionality and LibraryThing has import functionality. Within minutes I was able to create an Excel file of my Shelfari data and successfully import into LibraryThing.

Comparison

• Before I get started with my own, here are some other blogger’s recent comparisons:
  • From Rebecca’s Reading Rants and Raves
  • From Read or Die Weblog (scroll way down, or search on Shelfari, within this long post)
• And, some intelligence from Publisher’s Weekly as of July 2007:
  

  Most shelving sites work the same way: users create a free account, list their books, label them with descriptive tags, ratings and/or reviews, and the resulting “bookshelf” is available for other users to peruse. The biggest sites are LibraryThing, which according to Internet ratings service Quantcast.com has 218,112 unique monthly users; GoodReads, with 15,192; and Shelfari, with 9,898. [up to date data from Quantcast for LibraryThing and Shelfari suggests LibraryThing gets more than twice the traffic (RS)] The differences between those sites and others, like Bookswellread.com, Revish.com and WhatsOnMyBookshelf.com, are in the details: most sites feature bulletin-board book discussions; some let users link profiles with “friends”; and many boast unique features, including recommendation engines, book groups and downloadable “widgets,” tools for users to post samples of their virtual shelves on private sites or blogs.

Now on to my own first impressions…

• User experience. LibraryThings’s application is more text-dense and gives off more the feeling of we-are-library-fanatics (fine by me, the MLIS degree wannabe) whereas Shelfari’s application is heavy on solid (colored) elements but lighter on text, and gives off a more commerce feeling. I found both fairly intuitive to get around in. Shelfari gives the appearance of being simpler, but I found a few things confusing or clunky in actual use. LibraryThing, although denser on text, feels lighter and faster overall in actual use. At initial impression, I’ll conclude for now “different feel, but no clear winner” on user experience — things to like and dislike on both.
• Both support tags and use comma-delimited entry. Here, LibraryThing clearly updates more quickly.
• Both support the concept of friends. Both use “requests” for connection. Shelfari supports customizing message.
• Both support member communities (groups). Neither service appears very strong here for my interest areas. LibraryThing does have a group for Knowledge Management; however, there are only 14 members and no active discussion threads. I was even less successful in LibraryThing for the training/learning area. Shelfari does have an Edu-Tech group with 43 members and some active discussion. It also has several knowledge management groups including overlapping ‘knowlege management books’ (with only one member), ‘knowledge management’ (5 members), and a ‘knowledge management and storytelling’ (4 members). None that appear active.
  • I’d need to use both services much more before I have an opinion on which provides more, or any, potential value in groups / community for my situation. With acknowledgement of the open question of investing in yet one more group / community platform and additional communities to add to all my others. Is there value?
• Cost. Shelfari is a free service regardless of the number of books you catalog. LibraryThing is free for the first 200, after which there is a fee of US$10 per year, or US$25 for life.
• Both support widgets for blogs. As I published this, I have both installed on mine. LibraryThing has a much cleaner sparse appearance that is more in keeping with my aesthetics. I also like LibraryThing’s random listing, which Shelfari supports in their web site view, but doesn’t support in the widget. Shortly I will be removing the Shelfari widget since I just can’t get beyond the appearance.

(11 March update) Thanks to tip from Shelfari’s developer Kevin in comments here, I now see what was hidden in plain sight…the ‘Text Listing’ option on the ‘Customize Your Widget’. Widget accordingly modified to my sparse aesthetic. Thanks Kevin!

• Both support amazon.com associates. Clicking on LibraryThing blog widget images goes directly to amazon.com with your associate ID populated; however, the text label links go to LibraryThing and the Buy link from there populates with LibraryThing’s associate ID. By contrast, the Shelfari widget mouse-over pop-up Buy button includes your associate ID, as does the click on image which goes to Shelfari site. Net: if you are really trying to get the pennies from your associate program, Shelfari looks like it may capture more revenue for you.
• The two services use a slightly different approach for searching for titles. Shelfari has separate fields for Title, Author, and ISBN. LibraryThings uses one field for all. Search speed wasn’t noticeably different.
• Shelfari has large in-your-face advertising for products unrelated in anyway to books.
• LibraryThing supports many more sources for book data, including the Library of Congress.
• Financial ties. LibraryThing is partly owned by AbeBooks – a plus for values-fit for me relative to keeping independent physical book stores a part of our landscape. amazon.com has invested in Shelfari. I trust and respect amazon.com, although I admit I shop around on price after using their site for primary guidance. The fact that they have invested in Shelfari is a slight plus for me as far as thinking this will add to likely longevity.

Tips So Far

• Update your profile.
  • LibraryThing: click on ‘Your profile’ in top-level navigation. This is also where you can edit ‘Account settings’. NB: the default setting is ’show email on profile’ with claim of being “spam protected.” Initially I reached to deselect, but then decided to leave as I already disclose my email in my blog About page.
  • Shelfari: ‘Me > Edit My Public Profile’ and separately ‘Me > Edit My Account Settings’ where for example you can control who gets to see your friends. I decided to go with “only my friends” here.
  • Both services support pictures, an ‘About me’, and location. LibraryThing as a couple of additional fields, e.g. ‘About my library’

• In Shelfari, click on ‘Edit Multiple Books’ button at the bottom of the ‘My Shelf’ page to launch a tabular view of your library that is similar to LibraryThing’s default view. This tabular view is a much easier way to add tags, ratings, and noting if you own, are reading, plan to read, etc. than via the mouse-over pop-up for an individual book. I found this particularly useful to add ‘own’ status to all my books as the default upon entering a new book is to only have ‘read’ selected — I wanted to do this so as to display all my books (the ones I own) in my blog widget.
• In Shelfari, size your widget width manually versus selecting the auto-sizing. For my WordPress the auto-sizing left me with a single column of books, whereas tweaking by hand allowed me to get to two books wide while still staying within my blog’s body border.

Random Notes

• No love is lost between the two companies. For example this post on Shelfari spam at LibraryThing. Do I need to feel like I have to pick sides on this one?
• Combined with some house-cleaning, I went through my blogroll to see if anyone was using either application. Here are the results…
  • LibraryThing: Karl Kapp
  • Sheflari listed in profiles, but no shelf display: Doug Cornelius , Clive Shepherd
  • Blogs that include ‘Recommended Books’ by other means: Healthcare IT Guy (self built), Chris Fletcher (self built?), SaaStream (uses amazon.com widget), InfoSpaces (anobii.com), Mark Oehlert (Kaboodle), Will Thalheimer (self built), Guy Kawasaki (self built?), Seth Godin (AdaptiveBlue)

  Conclusion: no market leader in my little corner of the blogosphere.

The Bottom (but still somewhat preliminary) Line

Where do I intend to invest? I lean towards LibaryThings due the sparse widget, application speed, and their stronger librarian orientation. What’s not to like? (a) The user fee if I decide to really catalog all my books…although the one-time US$25 seems trivial, and echoing Rebecca, the right thing to do for a non-advertising supported service, and (b) the suspicion that I’ll be giving away some amazon.com associates revenue. Full disclosure: as of today, I’ve cleared exactly zero revenue from associates since starting to embed my ID in book links a few weeks ago. All I’m hoping to do is to subsidize my book habit during tight times, not pay the mortgage.

For Further Reading

• LibraryThing’s company blog: Thingology
  
• LibraryThing del.icio.us tag
• Shelfari company blog
• Shelfari del.icio.us tag
• A recent comparison of Goodreads and LibraryThings
• From American Pai, a mention of some other second-tier services in this category