Amanda Pape's List: Using LibraryThing as a K-12 Classroom Library Organization/Management Tool

Contact presenter Amanda Pape for more information about this presentation!

I did not want to use a PowerPoint or even a Prezi or Google Presentation for this session. I played with a stack in Delicious (a social bookmarking tool) but ultimately decided to use another social bookmarking tool, Diigo, because of its Webslides feature. (I also created a board on Pinterest (Genealogy and Family History, under Amanda Pape) for another presentation on that topic).

LibraryThing account set up for the children's literature and teacher resource collection at Tarleton State University by presenter, Amanda Pape.

Official Help and FAQ page for LibraryThing

"This will be my second year teaching 4th grade and I mostly organize by level (and alphabetical by author's last name within the levels), but I also have separate sections for series, popular authors, non-fiction, non-leveled picture books, etc.

You can check out my organizing scheme on my profile page under 'tags used for inventorying'."

Here's a classroom library example:

"I teach second grade, and I am fairly new to LT. I have been entering my personal library since early spring [2011]. My plan is to not only be able to locate books that I know I own and frequently have trouble locating, but also share my books by theme and author with my students. As I have entered each book, I have used address labels to tag each book as I have in my LT library. I am going to use those tags to print just the covers of those books with the same tags. For instance, in the Fall I will print on tag board my book covers tagged apples, pumpkins, and Fall. Then I will laminate these picture sheets with those themes. Each of my students is assigned a number on the first day of school. It is determined by where their names fall in ABC order in the class list. This is important because at the beginning of each week, each student will choose several (exact number yet to be determined) of my books and find those book covers on my laminated sheet and write their number on top of the picture of the book cover. They will use an expo marker so it can easily be erased. I will spend a few minutes collecting the books every couple of days and erase their numbers as books are returned. Since each book cover is labeled on the back, each child should be capable of matching the picture on the back of each book with the picture on the basket so that students can shelf them without much help from me. I don't know how much sense this makes to anyone reading this, but I am very excited to have found an easy way to share books, keep them organized, make my kiddos responsible, and do it all quickly."

This teacher-in-training uses LibraryThing. The link is to a page on her website where she links to her LibraryThing account and also employs a LibraryThing widget. Here's what she said in mid-December, 2011:

'I am a student at the University of Mary Washington. I just finished my Student Teaching on Friday. Now I'm looking for a job in an elementary school. The suffixes are meant to show just that. Certain children's books repeat word chunks which help students learn to read and recognize them. This way I can use trade books to target specific chunks in reading centers or guided reading to give very young children plenty of exposure to them. I used my textbook, "Literacy in the Early Grades" by Gail E. Tompkins to give me guidance on what books to check out.

I am also using LibraryThing to remember which books I want to use to re-enforce different reading strategies, genres, and story structures. For every unit I'd like to have a resource bucket related to that unit where students can practice their skills on more than just the basal reader.

Have you heard of anyone introducing parents to LibraryThing? I'd like to use it as an alternative to reading logs, but I'm not sure whether it would catch on. I'd have to pilot it first."

"I am an elementary (Pre-K to grade 6; 4 to 12 year olds) school librarian in Boston, MA.

These are books I like to recommend to kids, with tags to make them easier to find.

I use LT to keep track of books I like and use so that when I get requests for recommendations, I have a first place to go. I have a separate account for my personal books that I have at home.

I have also used LT to explain tagging and tag clouds to my students.

The FP tags are for Guided Reading (aka Fountas & Pinnell) levels. The SR tags are for my summer reading lists. I tag with the different grade levels and categories and use it to populate my reading lists."

Here's how this college-level children's literature instructor uses LibraryThing:

"I have been using LT in several children's literature classes (English 540 and Education 490) at University of Michigan since 2008. I've been having students log texts for current and future teaching ever since I began teaching these courses, and once it became clear that social media networks such as LT and GR existed and could be used, I have wanted students to know and explore them.

I ask that students in our Literature for Children and Young Adults in a Digital Age log 70 texts (tagging and rating them) and write at least 30 reviews to receive an A. I set up a group for the class, and invite everybody to join--which then makes it easy for me to check in on what students are doing re logging. Also, I occasionally post forum questions, and ask that students reply in Library Thing.

I am hoping that LibraryThing can become an ongoing resource for them beyond the semester--but it is really interesting how much I apparently need to point out. The students are pretty single-minded about what they "need" to do for the class, and they don't tend to explore LibraryThing's features--its groups, the way you can see what others have done re tagging and reviewing, etc.--unless nudged a bit.

Personally, I think it is very useable, and user-friendly. Way better than note cards and other formats for logging. I used to offer options, but now I just have them all use LibraryThing."

Some classroom teachers use this system to organize their books

This article includes a section on how librarians at Boise State University used LibraryThing as a collection development tool.

"An institutional LibraryThing account was purchased for each liaison to organize their subject accounts. Liaisons added book and media titles to their accounts, tagged them with collecting codes, and indicated ordering priority. Acquisitions' staff with access rights to the accounts went in and retrieved orders weekly, according to an order schedule. Online communication between liaisons and acquisitions staff during the ordering process was made via the LibraryThing account. As book orders were processed, acquisitions staff did individual account maintenance to keep subject accounts up-to-date and ready for future ordering."

This is more or less a summary of Roberta Sibley's article, "The Librarian Who Loves LibraryThing" from the April 2009 issue of School Library Media Activities Monthly, on how she used LibraryThing to support a high school course:

"We have a senior elective in our school entitled 'Reading in Literature.' Students develop a personal reading plan, do booktalks, participate in literature circles, keep a log of responses to teacher-prompted questions, and review the books they read. It was the perfect place to try out LibraryThing with students. Teachers can go paperless and keep track of student reading logs, journals, and reviews online. They can also respond to students individually, and those responses can be private communications between teacher and student."

(One word of caution: according to the site's Terms of Use, children under the age of 13 are prohibited from using LibraryThing. This limits its K-12 use to high school students.)

A tutorial based on Roberta Sibley's article "The Librarian Who Loves LibraryThing."

From a presentation by Dale Brown at the 2008 JALT (Japan Association for Language Teaching) Conference entitled "Using Librarything.com to promote extensive reading."

Brown demonstrated how his students used LibraryThing "to record, rate, and review the books they read, and also view each other's ratings and reviews. The website gives teachers a quick and simple means to monitor students, as our institutions demand, thus making it possible to allow students to read freely and independently, while at the same time helping to create a sense of a reading community among the students."

Roberta Sibley, a high school librarian, writes about how she used LibraryThing to support a high school course:

"We have a senior elective in our school entitled 'Reading in Literature.' Students develop a personal reading plan, do booktalks, participate in literature circles, keep a log of responses to teacher-prompted questions, and review the books they read. It was the perfect place to try out LibraryThing with students. Teachers can go paperless and keep track of student reading logs, journals, and reviews online. They can also respond to students individually, and those responses can be private communications between teacher and student."

(One word of caution: according to the site's Terms of Use, children under the age of 13 are prohibited from using LibraryThing. This limits its K-12 use to high school students.)

"Extending the Reading Experience with Web 2.0 Book Groups" by Penny Thompson of Michigan State University, published in 2010 in Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 25: Iss. 2, Article 9.

Used by Miss Penniman to organize books in her classroom library.

one teacher uses a system recommended in one of these books to organize her LibraryThing catalog.

A school librarian blogger exploring web 2.0 tools has some ideas of how LibraryThing can be used in a school setting.