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my new bird book review site (1 Viewer)

jedigrant

Well-known member
I've finally gotten around to creating a website for bird book reviews. You can find it here:
The Birder's Library

For the moment it's hosted on my ISP webspace. I want to eventually get my own domain.
I'm still playing with the design and formatting, but I've got 8 family guide reviews up right now.
I'm very interested in any suggestions on design, content, or anything. I would love some feedback.

I hope it's useful, and I plan on adding new reviews regularly.

Grant
 
Just curious...is one allowed to post a sample page-spread (for example, a picture of a field guide plate) of the book? Or is this some sort of copyright no-no? I wanted to start a bird book site, too...but don't want to cross the authors!
 
swamp_rattler said:
Just curious...is one allowed to post a sample page-spread (for example, a picture of a field guide plate) of the book? Or is this some sort of copyright no-no? I wanted to start a bird book site, too...but don't want to cross the authors!

I don't know about the c/r laws regarding this matter, but lots of librarys do it. It is also done on amazon.com and all major book retailers web sites.
 
I'd also really like to know. I'd love to post sample pictures from some books (like just one sample species account). Ideally they would be of sufficient size and quality to read, but not full size.
But I don't want to break any laws.
 
Great idea for a site and looks really good. Only complaints are the depth of the criticism which is slightly generalised and also books seemed to get polarised marks, either very high or low with not much middle ground. Are all the 4 and 5 star books as good as each other or is more stratification needed? You may be right with all these, im not familiar with any titles but these are my honest opinions. Good luck, seems like the start of a great site.

Regards

James
 
Thanks Hotspur, I very much appreciate it.
I think I kinda rushed the first batch of reviews. There are just so many books that I want to get to.
I updated the review of The Shorebird Guide to include more details.
I've also posted a new review of Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion

If you find the time, please let me know if you think those two go deep enough.

For the first set of reviews I chose what I thought were the best guides (except for the Tanagers, Cardinals, and Finches book), so they all got similar ratings. The Princeton photographic guides in particular - Shorebirds, Sparrows, and the yet to be reviewed Hummingbird guides - are all very similar and I think will all have the same rating. So far only the aforementioned Tanager/Finch guide is a disappointment.
I think that as I add more reviews the ratings will even out. I hope so anyway.
 
Thats the sort of review i was looking for. ;) Like i said good site and just needs padding out with the 3 zillion birding titles out there. Also as you do more i guess reviewing and being objective gets easier.
 
Thanks Hotspur. I hope you're right about it getting easier.

pigsonthewing, thanks for the link. I played around with it some and got the impression that this would be a great thing to use for reader-submitted reviews. That's a feature that I was wanting to eventually add to the site, so I will definitely keep this in mind.
 
jedigrant said:
[about the hReveiw mircroformat] I played around with it some and got the impression that this would be a great thing to use for reader-submitted reviews. That's a feature that I was wanting to eventually add to the site, so I will definitely keep this in mind.
It's suitable for your own reviews as much as for others'. Pelase feel free to PM me if you need some assistance in usung it.
 
Whew! Finally, after a couple of weeks working on it, I've finally uploaded a complete redesign of the site.
I've tested it using IE6 and the latest FireFox, so hopefully it will be alright for everyone. But if you have any issues, let me know.
Now I can work on more reviews.....
 
jedigrant said:
Whew! Finally, after a couple of weeks working on it, I've finally uploaded a complete redesign of the site.
I've tested it using IE6 and the latest FireFox, so hopefully it will be alright for everyone. But if you have any issues, let me know.
Now I can work on more reviews.....

(Belated response) the hReviews work well - thank you.
 
Other posters to this thread may be interested in the social software, LibraryThing http://www.librarything.com.

Its free, and users can easily and quickly build up a catalogue of their books. Reviews and tags can be added that enable you to quickly retrieve details of your collection, but very usefully find what other like-minded readers have in their own collections.

I've made a start on my own collection, which may serve as an example of what can be done. I've rated and tagged, but not yet reviewed my own books.

trealawboy's LibraryThing at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/trealawboy
 
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