A Whole New Way to Organize your Virtual Library with Shelfari

Advertisements

For those into social networking via virtual book collection, Shefari just introduced some new features into the way it organizes your book collection. If you have been using Shelfari, you would notice that your virtual shelf in Shelfari is now sporting a new look. A wooden virtual shelf where you can fill in with your book collections complete with realistic book covers of the books in your library.

But aside from the new Shelfari look, the book social networking site also added a new way to organize your book collection. You can now view your virtual library either according to:

• books you’ve read
• book you own
• books you plan to read
• books on your wish list
• and you favorite books

You can also change the size of the book as displayed on your virtual Shelfari book shelf. Right on top of the virtual shelf are little icons to change the size of your shelf into small, medium and large shel view. When you change the size of the shelf, the size of the books on the shelf adjust as well. Now, that’s what I call simply neat.

In addition to these nifty features, Shelfari also introduced cool looking icons which can be used by your Shelfari networks to indicate how they’ve found the book titles on your Shelfari collections. They can indicate whether the book is one of their favorites, and this is indicated by a small heart icon. You can also put a talk icon to a particular book title to indicate which books have your opinion on their details. Little green bookmarks are used to indicate which books are also in your friends’ virtual shelves. And of course, the most important of all these icons are the book ratings. Book ratings in your Shelfari book shelf is indicated by the number of stars located on the lower part of the book shelf.

Topping off these new features is the use of mouseover to display brief descriptions about the books in your shelf. You no longer have to click on the book itself to learn more information about the book. This saves you time when browsing shelves with a lot of books on them.

Shelfari has come a long way since it was founded in October 2006. It had certainly matched up with its closes rival, LibraryThing.