Born Forty Years Too Late

Okay, now I'm feeling really hassled! I absolutely loved this week's assignment and was very excited to discover these sites. I had written a long post about it but somehow lost it when I was trying to find the URL of my LibraryThing page to create the link! AARGH. So here goes again and I will probably need to write this in installments because I'm jumping back and forth between the desk and the backroom all day.
I was somewhat embarrassed that I did not know about these sites and I'm sure I'll be spreading the word. I've belonged to a book club for about 35 years and every now and then we try to resurrect, from memory, a list of the books we've discussed, when, and who recommended them. This would have been the perfect tool if we had known about it then--but, oh wait, Al Gore hadn't even invented the internet yet then, had he!
Actually I liked the more personal history/reading plan features of goodreads, but I guess you could use LibraryThing the same way by putting reading history or plans in the notes field of each title. It would be interesting to know whether the various editions of a book are somehow linked in the database. I know I chose newer or different editions of several of the books that I had read in the past, partly because I like having the picture and many of the older editions don't have that feature.
Just as an aside, it was interesting to note how few of the libraries on the list of those incorporating LibraryThing in their catalogs use iBistro/Sirsi-Dynix. We do get a fair number of reader guidance inquiries and I can see how it would be handy to have it right in the catalog and not to have to haul out reference books or go to a separate website like Novelist or LibraryThing to get recommendations. Still I don't know how useful the recommendations are, especially for those of us whose reading taste is pretty eclectic. I noticed that the majority of the titles recommended in the LibraryThing listings in the catalogs I searched were just other titles in the series or related to the series, with a very few things outside the series. Perhaps that's okay since many people would just want more of the same.
Several of the titles I added to my LibraryThing page did not show any additional suggestions in the Danbury catalog. For example, The Boxcar Children had no LibraryThing recommendations. However if you chose one of the other books in the series, it recommended other titles in the series (but not The Boxcar Children itself). Others, like "The Black Pearl Mystery," listed other titles but none in the series, so it's not consistent. When you clicked on the "boxcar children" tag you got a list of several other titles in the series, but not the original. I suppose that's because most people don't tag a book with the title words--even though in this case, someone might not realize there was an original book without "mystery" in the title.
When I was working in youth services I loved doing reader guidance, introducing children who were stuck on a lower level series into something with some of the same elements, but with a higher literary merit. Now that I'm working with adults, I find reader guidance a bit overwhelming--possibly because I don't read much popular fiction and don't remember a lot of the titles I'm reading, possibly because adults who are stuck at the fluff level in their reading are more resistant to challenging themselves. There are a few patrons whose tastes are similar to mine who come to me for recommendations, but it would be nice for them to have a tool in the catalog to use for reader guidance.
I was eager to try to suggester and unsuggester, but when I tried a title I read recently and liked in suggester I got no hits (except the title itself) and when I tried unsuggester to try a title I hated I got a list of mostly the author's other works which to me is a no brainer.
Anyway, here is the link to my page.