We've been using a G+ community for event announcements and discussions. It's been fine. We're pretty small so we don't need a lot in terms of management. https://plus.google.com/communities/113393567679559625537 For voting, we've used both a Google Drive Form and simply a discussion thread. On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 6:38 AM, Jon Gorman <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I've been musing on software tools that might be useful for book clubs. > > I'm not necessarily looking for a turnkey solution explicitly geared > towards book clubs, but more a thought experiment of what tools might be > useful for an ongoing "in the real world" book club. > > Some needs that software tools might help keep track of: > > * A way to vote for what books to read next > * Schedule of times > * An estimator calculator (reading level of book + length of book, > estimated sessions). > * way to add notes or linked materials > * online discussions to supplement in person meetings > * glossary/dictionary functionality perhaps? > > In my own thoughts some of the online services like GoodReads, Shelfari and > LibraryThing seems to at least offer some tools and information. A system > that I haven't had a chance to explore enough, Loomis, might help with the > decision making parts. > > > Part of the impetus for this is I've recently joined a technical book club. > At the moment we're using a wiki, which is working fine, but in particular > the voting is clunky. I could picture something where members can add/link > to something like librarything in a list and the book with the most votes > (w/ ties being broken randomly) is the next book in the queue. > > So anyone out there already doing something similar? Thoughts? Ideas? > > Jon Gorman > University of Illinois >