Many online applications have developed for book lovers to organize their collections, participate in book groups, share and collaborate.  Check these out:

	This site not only allows you to easily create an online catalog of your own books, it also connects you to other people who have similar libraries and reading tastes. Explore:About LibraryThing, Library Thing tourAnd discover Librarians who LibraryThing
	You  can catalogue your own books, list what you’re reading  have read or want to read. You can review books, tag them, rate them and add a widget to your blog. You can be linked to Amazon to purchase  & you can search library catalogues!
	A community dedicated to books and book clubs. Find reviews, discussion guides or take a course.
	A virtual library where you can browse everyone’s bookshelves, read their reviews and book ratings, join discussion groups or start a book club.

LibraryThing and Libraries

How libraries are using LibraryThing

Librarians Who LibraryThing

Examples of how public libraries use LibraryThing for Libraries  to enhance their catalogs

• Danbury Public Library
• Westport Public Library
• Truman Public Library
• San Francisco State University
• Listing of LibraryThing Libraries – Other Libraries

Authors

And how about sites for our favorite authors?  Check these out:

Authors on the Web and AuthorYellowPages are put together by TheBookReportNetwork.com, which also created ReadingGroupGuides.com, an online community for reading groups, and Bookreporter.com, a great place to get to know more about your favorite authors, as well as several other reading-related sites.

Learning Activities:

1. Explore the sites above.  Choose one and create an account.

2. Develop a library with at least 5 books, and invite a colleague to share their reviews/comments
3. Considerations for your blog this week:  Include a link to the library you created.  Which one did you like best?  Where there features missing that you wished had been there? Are you aware of any other libraries using these tools?  Any ideas for applications at a public library?

Random House, the world’s biggest book publisher, is considering joining a book-search project run by Google, once considered an archenemy by the paper publishing industry. The two parties are talking to one another about the less controversial part of Google’s book-scanning project–its partner program–sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters at this week’s Frankfurt Book Fair.

Google has agreements with more than 10,000 publishers, large and small, who give their books to Google to be scanned in full. Google then makes them partially available–according to agreements with each publisher–for online readers.

It also works with 27 academic and reference library partners to gain access to out-of-print works.

But part of the library project has proved controversial and thrown Google into legal dispute with U.S. publishers as Google also scans works from its U.S. library partners that are still in copyright without asking the publishers first.

Read More at ZDNET

Being a professional PR person who spent a lot of my time organising big events, I must say the folks at The DigitalMovement (TDM) put together a decent event last Thursday evening. The success of an event often lies in the quality of its speakers and the audiences. The other element is what i called – “style”.

I can’t say there was alot of “style” at PopOut! - (an event aimed at engaging the community, students, technopreneur, venture capitalist and startups interested in the web2.0 services) but there were definitely some good presenters and a bunch of “geeky” but fun and savvy audiences. The content was pretty good too – informative and some great insights into a few cool start-ups with inspiring stories and products to tell.

What wowed the crowd and ME was Herryanto Siatono, the creator of BookJetty. The simple fact that it was books related caught my attention. In fact, it was the reason why I decided to pop down to the event. I briefly mentioned BookJetty in one of my previous post when I was comparing social book sites and what is really cool about bookjetty is the SMS service that allows users to receive SMS about details of the book they are looking for in the libraries.

TheMediaSlut wrote a more detailed post about Herry’s points.

And I signed up at BookJetty this morning. I just have to keep updating my ever-growing booklists.

The other presentation that I enjoyed was by Gen Kanai, director of marketing and partner relations, Mozilla Japan who gave a preview on Firefox 3.0 – way cool!

Check out some of the cool features at Claudia’s blog

Ross from Bezurk did a rather interesting presentation, giving quite a bit of insights and tips to entrepreneurs. I thought that was great, instead of just shouting your own products.

The other few presentations -ZopIM , Quaffs and Recruit.net, I didn’t really get what they were talking about. Perhaps I was not the target audience or maybe my anti-biotic pills were kicking in by then, making me really drowsy (yes, I was not feeling very well that night and spent the next whole day in bed with a fever).

Lastly, I did make some new friends at the event and caught up with some “old” ones. Said bye bye to Bjorn Lee (who had been my lunch “date” for a while) and now he is in Beijing, on a new job – awesome! Managed to meet up with new friends whom I chatted and blogged with online – Darryl Kang, Brian Koh and Coleman Yee. Nice to be able to put faces to the names.

If you have an interest in PR, as I do… then check this out

David Meerman Scott writes…… (click on the hyper linked book title for a complimentary copy)

“The New Rules of PR – a new and updated edition of the ebook for 2007 with a forward and newsmaker tips by David McInnis, founder & CEO of PRWeb, a Vocus Company.

When I first released my ebook The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly by posting it on my site and my blog and sending a press release out about it in mid-January 2006, I thought I might get a few thousand downloads. Imagine my surprise when the ebook was downloaded more than 15,000 times in just the first week!

Since then, I have been happily watching the wave of interest from this effort and am amazed by the metrics:
When I first put it out, there was precisely one hit on Google for the exact phrase “new rules of pr.” The last time I checked there were over 9,000 Google hits because hundreds of bloggers and online media outlets have written about the ebook and thousands of readers have commented on my blog and others.”

His new book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” is available from bookjetty