Blog about those research sources!

Those doing literary research should make public their working sources during their research and drafting processes.

Student Rachel Rueckert posted reviews of
books she was researching both on Goodreads
and on her research blog.

Blog about the books and sites that you are reading, researching, and skimming! Tweet about some of those articles you are going through! Post reviews about the books you research, make blog posts evaluating that archival website or digital resource! Keep your researching and thinking as public as possible! 


Read on to learn why.

Connecting with Books in the Digital Age

Today I taught my students about nontraditional (non-scholarly) ways of looking up information about books -- especially ways that connect them socially with other people. Here's a recap of some of these sources:

1. Goodreads
   Goodreads has reviews of books, lists of books (via Listopia), and a variety of ways of connecting with other readers through its social network. 
2. Amazon
   Amazon provides not just a way to buy books, but to find books, get recommendations based on similar books, find or post reviews, and to create wishlists that can be public and thematically related.
3. Google Books
   Google Books provides a way to search inside of books, find reviews of books, find related books, etc. One can also add books to one's Google library (essentially bookmarking books). Of course, you can also buy books through this service.
4. Google Blog Search / Icerocket / Technorati
   These are three different blog search engines to find out who is talking about specific books within the blogosphere.
5. Diigo
   One can also find discussion about books by searching social bookmarking systems like Diigo. Diigo also has a groups community, allowing one to join communities who are actively researching and bookmarking on a desired topic.
6. Slideshare / Prezi
   These are both presentation archives with social components. It's a good place to find recent and current presentations people have prepared on all kinds of topics, including books.
7. Open Educational Resources: OER Commons / MIT OpenCourseWare / Connexions
   There are amazing, freely available collections of online courses or course syllabi. These are often great ways to find out a context in which certain books are being discussed or used, especially currently or recently.
8. Twitter Search
   Find current comments about books or authors through straight searches or hashtag searches