Website Wednesday is a regular feature in which we highlight one (or a couple) of sites from the Billions floating around the Intertoobz that just might help you with your Herculean task of educating inquiring minds. Any and all suggestions for future editions are welcome.
Speaking of computerized recommendations, I came across this site a few weeks ago, and wasted a good hour playing with it. It’s called “What Should I Read Next?” and it’s super easy to use. It works better with better known and more widely read books (really disappointing suggestions for W.E.B. DuBois, for example), but even the disappointments are interesting for what they say about American reading patterns, I think.
One question that always comes up at the end of the semester, from some student or other, is “What should I read next?” It’s always a fun conversation to have, but even with 30 of us, it’s limited by the experiences in the room. It would be fun to have that conversation with this tool.
And if you want to know more about the people who run the site (and what they’re doing with your data!), you can read about it here. Have fun!
And, I figure, the more registered users they have, making recommendations, the better the tool will be.
The Harold Lounge 