Thursday, August 23, 2012

I see a tall, handsome book in your future....

Escher's Crystal Ball
Netflix users will be very familiar with LibraryThings new interactive online reader advisory service, BookPsychic, because it runs along very similar lines to the movie site's rating system. Offered a tasty array of book covers on the BookPsychic page, readers rate them from one to five stars. (Or, choose other options, such as "not interested" and "save for later".) Book covers continue to pop up, arcade style, and when you feel you've had enough fun for one session (it's kind of addictive, I found) you ask for a recommendation based on your ratings. Ta daaaa! A custom list of books is prepared, just for you.
 LibraryThing is partnering with real libraries (Portland Public Library, right here in Maine, is the first to go live with it - cool beans!) to connect BookPsychic to their own online catalogs, which means you can see which of your recommendations are available at your very own library.
You can play with BookPsychic anonymously, or set up an account if you want your ratings and recommendations saved.
Go ahead and give it a try: I predict you'll like it.

1 comment:

  1. Do you usually think about optimizing the blog posts for search systems?

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