Google’s “My Library” (and Other Bookish Social Networks)

As part of Google’s push into the dig­i­tal book mar­ket (see Fri­day’s post), the com­pa­ny launched last week My Library, which lets you cre­ate lists of your own books, search the con­tent of your book inven­to­ry by key­word, and then share your book lists with friends. (You can see exam­ples of these book lists here and here, and also get Google’s offi­cial spiel on the project here.) It’s a nice idea for stu­dents and schol­ars, but will it have much take-up with the broad­er read­ing pub­lic? I’m skep­ti­cal, but you tell me? We’ve got many bona fide read­ers here. Will you be sink­ing time into build­ing your Google Library? Or are you instead ever-refin­ing your Face­book pro­file and shar­ing book­lists there? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Check out the Visu­al Book­shelf app on Face­book, which offers an effec­tive way of shar­ing your books with your social net­work. Also be sure to scan Deeplink­ing’s com­pi­la­tion, The Big List of Book­ish Social Net­works. Final­ly, if you cre­ate a book­list on Google Library (start mak­ing one here), send the urls our way and we’ll post them.

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