What’s on Your Bookshelf?

Do you love your books and treasure them as well known friends? Or are books just something that you occasionally pick up to pass the time? Whatever your reading habits you may be interested in organising your books and ‘cataloging’ them so you can remember what you have read.

You may have heard of – or even tried – Library Thing or one of several other online social cataloging websites. They are social in that you can find people with similar tastes to yours and perhaps you will enjoy some of the books that they have been reading.

I recently transferred my Library Thing bookshelves to Libra .

My books on Libra

iLibrarian last week blogged about 10 Websites for Book Lovers which includes several sites I hadn’t heard about. Play with them and see if you like the idea of having your very own library.

Print-on-Demand

U-M Libraries Offer Print-on-Demand

(wouldn’t it be great if we could have this at our college?)

The Shapiro Library at the University of Michigan has become the first university library to install an Espresso Book Machine, also known as “the ATM of books”, which prints public domain books in a matter of 5-7 minutes. The service is available to researchers, students and the public at a cost of $10 per book. According to their recent press release:

“The printing process begins with a reader selecting a digitized book from U-M’s pre-1923 collection or from another online source, such as the Open Content Alliance. Most books printed prior to the early 1920s can be reprinted without seeking the permission from whomever holds the copyright. Then the file is downloaded to the Espresso Book Machine, where it is formatted, printed and perfect bound with a four-color cover.”

via Open Access News

Source: http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2008/u-m-libraries-offer-print-on-demand/