In November, OCLC and Goodreads announced improvements to their partnership that will promote the visibility of libraries on the popular site using increased marketing through social media. Check out what they have planned here.

Prior to that announcement, I tuned in to the webinar “Goodreads.com: Book Discovery and Beyond in a Web 2.0 World” hosted by the Education Institute with instructors May P Chan and Trudi Stafford. Although I already use Goodreads to keep track of my books and to interact with friends and colleagues, I was keen to learn more about Goodreads as a Reader’s Advisory tool.

If you were at the RA in a Half-Day Event on Oct 24 at City Centre Library in Surrey, you may have already discussed the value of Goodreads for RA.

Some fun facts that I learned about Goodreads from this webinar:

–over 11 million members and 395 million books

–every second, 2 books are discovered on Goodreads

–every 2 seconds, a book is finished on Goodreads

–20 million visits every month

–20,000 online book clubs

–In addition to OCLC, Goodreads uses book data from Ingram Book Company, WorldCat, the Library of Congress, and the British Library, among others

–bigger than Shelfari and LibraryThing

One of Goodreads’ features is the option to make lists of books based on any criteria known to humankind. Two of the presenters’ quirky favourites were:

Dude, Where’s My Forehead?

and

Dealbreakers: If You Like This Book We Won’t Get Along

Goodreads even has its own team of hard-working librarians! Goodreads Librarians edit book data to ensure accuracy and spend time combining and collating book reviews and ratings for different editions. To become a Goodreads Librarian, you must have at least 50 books on your profile. Check out the Librarian Manual for everything you ever wanted to know about becoming a Goodreads Librarian.

I’d love to connect on Goodreads! Look me up at Meghan Savage.

-Meghan