Tim+Stauffer+Rough+Draft+Page

=**Tim Stauffer Rough Draft Page**=

Book Networking Revolution
Myspace and Facebook are not the only social networking sites out there. A whole group of pages have started up in the past couple of years to promote book networking. This is a relatively new phenomenon and the possibilities for the future are vast. One of the sites specializing in this area is aNobii. On this page you create your own account and you start making a bookshelf. After you digitally put a book on your book shelf you can put some information about it on your site. You select what the status is on the progress you have made in reading the book and how much you liked it if you have finished it. Also you can say where you got the book from and if you are willing to lend it out. When you search for a book the site will tell you who else has that book on their bookshelf so you can connect with people who have similar reading interests as you. The site also gives a rating of how compatible your bookshelf is with someone else’s. A great feature of aNobii is that you can read reviews of books from people who you have come to know and respect and who have similar interests as you. This way you don’t have to rely on some professional for an opinion but you can get the opinion of regular people. If you have a book checked out from the library you can choose to have an e-mail sent notifying you when it comes due. One commentator pointed out that in the future sites like aNobii could negotiate with publishers to get direct buy deals for their clients which would bypass businesses like Amazon.com. With sites like these popping up all over the place and their memberships growing they will become more and more powerful. They will provide a great way for new authors to get famous. If a new science fiction writer comes on the scene and people see her book on someone else’s book shelf it could spread like wildfire if people enjoy reading it. This is a great way to get free advertising. It’s like word of mouth but with a computer and the ability to have it get all over the world. LibraryThing is another site which works in this area. It first came about on August 19, 2005. At that time the next year it already had more than 70 thousand users who had catalogued more than a million books. It now has over 400 thousand users and has catalogued many more books. In 2006 Abebooks bought a forty percent share into LibraryThing. People who use this web site are called thingamabrarians. They have many options to work with. Like aNobii users can choose to keep their information private but most people choose to make it public because that is the main point of these types of places. One thing this web page does is tell you which books are very unlikely to be owned by people with the books you have catalogued. This site will list for you the top fifty people who have a similar library to you. Then you can contact them or leave a comment on their page. This site will also help you find people who want to read your old books. Another such site is Shelfari. This company has been invested in by Amazon. It was involved in a controversy concerning unsolicited e-mail. Jesse Wegman wrote about how he has a gmail account and his contacts were sent invitations from Shelfari even though he did not want this. It happened because Shelfari automatically set out the e-mails because Mr. Wegman did not unselect his contacts which Shelfari had imported for him. The company says this issue has been resolved. If you use these kinds of web sites you will probably become familiar with the concept of tagging. Tagging is just a way of grouping similar things together so you can more easily recall stuff which you need. For example, if someone liked to read books about lions he could tag all of his lion books as "books about lions". Then when he wanted to look at which books he has read about lions he can simply bring up this tag. Each item can also have more than one tag. So if one of the books had a section on tigers he could tag it as a tiger book as well. Tags are not just for individuals to use for themselves. Whole online communities can share their tags so people can run tag searches and see what others are tagging in areas which interest them. This is an excellent way to find new books which you have not heard about in your areas of interest. All of these book networking sites fall under the category of being part of what is called Web 2.0. This term is basically used to describe social networking sites. That is, places on the Internet where people can come and receive as well as input to the site. Another term which has popped up is Library 2.0. It is a spinoff of Web 2.0 and it basically means that library users are able to give feedback to the library site and the library site should be continuously updated with the newest technology and features. Let’s shift gears a little bit and turn our eyes to the north. There is a company from Canada which specializes in selling used books and many of them are hard to find books. They are called AbeBooks. From this site you can buy books from more than fifty different countries. They are different than the previous sites discussed because they actually sell books. Abebooks allows independent bookstores to list their inventory giving customers access to a wide array of books. Also they sell magazines and audio books and more. When AbeBooks started back in 1996 it was a very small operation. AbeBooks takes a commission off the sales of the books by the independent bookstores. Amazon.com has moved to aquire AbeBooks. AbeBooks for a while had a working partnership with Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as others but in 2005 these ties were cut off. Abebooks owns forty percent of LibraryThing. Many of these sites are interwoven with each other. The book review sections of newspapers are on the decline. This could be because newspaper circulation is down in general and cutbacks are necessary to stay on budget. Recreational reading is also on the decline among American adults. Will these new book networking sites encourage people to spend more time reading? This remains to be seen. Perhaps new devices like the Kindle will help book networking sites to grow in popularity. The Kindle was started by Amazon.com. It was a huge success upon release and it took Amazon o long time to get them in stock after the initial sell out. It can be used without a computer so even those who are not comfortable using a computer can jump on the Kindle bandwagon. It comes with a hefty price tag though, you’ll have to slap down more the three hundred and fifty dollars to pick one up. Whispernet is the network which Kindle owners use to download the content for it. The Kindle is only available in the United States because the network is only available in America. This will surely change as technology advances. Surely customers in other countries will demand a Kindle of their own and many companies will be ready to fill the void. You can hold about 200 books on the Kindle. You can also put audio on the Kindle so audio books are a go. New books are much more expensive than older books are just as in the print world. Certainly piracy will become an issue as everything starts to get passed around in digital form instead of hard copy form. All of these technologies are advancing at a very rapid pace and they continue to interact with each other in new and interesting ways. Five years from now the landscape will look completely different than it does right now and no one really knows where all of this is headed. Anyone who guesses well could make a lot of money in the stock market but whichever way it goes it will be an interesting ride for all of us. Book networking sites are certainly a part of the future.

> > > > Chester Harman's feedback for Stauffer's 3INF (following the same above questions): > > >
 * ||  Jason Greising's feedback for Timothy Stauffer's 3INF :
 * **What is the thesis?** Type out the thesis you find in the paper in your own words; it will help you see whether the writer's main insight is made sufficiently clear. To explain different sites that are used for network socializing.
 * **How is the essay organized?** Describe in three or four sentences how the essay is organized. This will help you determine if the structure was clear. This essay is very organized. It talks about many different web pages that are link together by people's love of books. The use of them as comparison to each other works well in defining the purpose of his paper.
 * **Was the organization logical?** Was this the best way the writer could present their information? Yes, 
 * **Were any parts not relevant to the thesis?** As a reader did you pause to wonder how a statement or paragraph was related to the thesis?  No
 * **What examples and types of evidence were most convincing?** Did the essay engage your emotions and appeal to your experiences in appropriate ways?  The part of evidence that I liked is the web 2.0 because I never knew that is what is used to talk about social internet sites.
 * **What two places could use more development?** Which places in the text need more evidence, examples, explanation. The final paragraph can use some more work to help pull everything together
 * **Did the introduction catch your attention?** The writer was probably writing about a topic that already interests them, so did they communicate that interest to you? Yes. Only recently I have started reading again. Most of the books I read are about close and similar topics and I would like to use sites like these to communicate to others about my readings. ||
 * 1)  The thesis deals primarily with social networking sites related to literature and home libraries, as well as suggestions generated by the libraries of others.
 * 1) <span style="color: rgb(60, 109, 55)">The essay is fairly straightforward, and the ideas linear and well fit to each other. The author starts with a broad statement and narrows to his particular argument/interest, making sure to maintain an even pace throughout.
 * 1) <span style="color: rgb(60, 109, 55)">It was indeed logical.
 * 2) <span style="color: rgb(60, 109, 55)">He speculates towards the end of the paper about the future (in general), while I would have preferred any such narrative to stay on topic.
 * 1) <span style="color: rgb(60, 109, 55)">There were plenty of examples to prove his point about how often literature logging social sites are used (such as the 400 thousand of LibraryThing). However, not many of these facts were cited -- certainly something to remedy for the final draft.
 * 2) <span style="color: rgb(60, 109, 55)">References, and with the way the paper flows -- very factual, would like to see a more rhetorical tone, almost conversational, if at all possible.
 * 3) <span style="color: rgb(60, 109, 55)">Yes. I love books, and anything about books. Any way to find more books to read has me hook, line, and sinker.