Friday, August 19, 2011

Sharing good book lists on WorldCat

I was looking up a book on worldcat.org today (Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered) and I realized how much I love living in a digital age.

For those of you who don't know WorldCat, it is an online library resource that provides the "official" library record with all of the publication info and library holdings worldwide, but it also provides Web 2.0 tools for everyone--like tagging, reviews, and the ability to make reading lists. If you want to create a reading list, you can create a free account and keep track of all the books you like, want, need, or hope to use later. However, if you don't want your own, you can still see other people's lists that they have made public.

So, at the bottom of the (Small is Beautiful) record I could see all of the public lists that include the book. In particular, I was impressed by this list: "Ecominimalism" by meg2584 [WorldCat.org]. The list's owner describes it as "A messy reading-list-in-progress, for a back-burner project of mine, synthesizing works on the natural and built environments, health, (anti)consumerism, development economics, and both upper- and lower-case-m minimalism." Awesome list, currently 69 books. I have read a few of them, and heard of a lot of them. But there are many I will be seeking out (probably using WorldCat, since the list is already right there).

1 comment:

Joann said...

I don't think I have ever heard ecominamalism - I don't even think I can spell it - but I like it