Care To Add Anything?

Even with all the new online applications designed as virtual post-it boards, for organizing schedules and to-do lists, I still find myself making lists with paper and pencil; grocery lists, lists of books I need to read yesterday, household tasks I can not put off any longer or a list of my lists.  During the month of December and even now, people are generating the best of 2012 lists, which as a reader I find invaluable.  There is no humanly possible way to read all the brilliant books written and illustrated in any given year.  I am still determined to read some from 2012 and even 2011.

As a lover of lists I was intrigued with a new web 2.0 application released on November 15, 2012 which was noted in a tweet by Heather Moorefield, Education Librarian at Virginia Tech and former chair of the American Library Association Best Websites for Teaching and Learning committee.  Listerd wants to revolutionize the world of lists.  Not only is this a location to generate lists but it is a platform designed for sharing, collaboration and the rating of items on any given list.

Upon accessing the home page users can visit the Blog to get the latest hints and updates, Discover lists grouped by Trending, Newest or All time plus search by category.  There are currently 21 categories;

• Animals & Nature
• Cars & Auto
• Fashion & Clothing
• Home & Family
• Music
• Religion
• Technology
• Arts & Design
• Education & Books
• Food & Drinks
• Games
• Politics
• Science
• Travel
• Business & Finance
• Entertainment
• Health & Fitness
• Local
• Relationships
• Sports and
• TV & Movies.

Continuing along the top you can Create new list, Sign up, Log in or conduct a keyword Search.  At the bottom another search is available, Browse.  In Browse you search by list title in alphabetical order.  

Listnerd is an online and mobile service free of charge.  Users must be 13 years old.  To use the site or register you must agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms.  

Whether you select Create new list or Sign up you are taken to a screen where you can use your Facebook or Twitter account to log in or create a non-social form of registration.  You provide a username, email address, password, birthday and country to register.  A welcome/confirmation email is sent immediately.

When registered you are taken to your profile page.  At this point you can view your created lists, added items, or votes cast, make and read posts to your wall, read your newsfeed (followers) and adjust your privacy settings.  On the right a running tally is available for your statistics, list of followers and those you follow.  

When you select Create new list another window opens illustrating a four step process in designing a list.  The first step (Basic Steps) asks you to:

• give your list a title
• enter in a description
• pick a category in which your list will be placed and
• choose whether your list will be public or private.

Who can vote (members only or everyone), voting system (1-10 rating scale, thumbs up or down and number of votes per user), who is allowed to add items to your list (everyone, everyone, with approval, only members can add, or members, with approval), and the time limit for voting (never-ending or at this date) are all parts of step two (Settings 'n stuff).  At any point you can go back to re-do your selections.

For step three (Styling 'n stuff) you can upload an image for the header and another for the individual list. There are several selections in step four (Advance stuff).  They are whether all items should have an image, description and URL link.  You can also add up to three custom fields for your list.

When you finalize all the steps your next screen profiles the created list with its title, description, stats and sharing abilities.  Beneath that section you begin to add items to the list.  For each added item you include a title, description, link or image depending on your settings.

When your list is completed it can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, LinkedIn, Tumblr or StumbleUpon.  Your entire list can be rated and comments can be left.  Each item can be rated by viewers according to their votes and edited or deleted by you.

Here is the link to my completed list titled Xena's Picks of the Litter-Top 20 Dog Books of 2012.  Items in a list can be expanded to see the description, links, etc by clicking on them.

Although I already had eleven views before I was even done, it remains to be seen how the sharing and collaboration of this list will evolve.  But I can state without reservation that I really like using Listnerd.  The developers have made it so easy to create and manipulate a list.  The potential for use in research resources, genre study, student generated favorite lists of books read, a Mock Caldecott or just about anything you can imagine make this an exciting tool for professional or personal use.