ShelfTaught Product Information and Latest Updates (2025)

ShelfTaught

Maker

Hi there, you fantastic hunters, you. Duncan here. I taught my-shelf to code to build ShelfTaught. Why ShelfTaught? because I kept meeting interesting people, and wished I knew a couple of their book recommendations. Or a speaker would list a couple of books at the end of their talk, and I would scramble to write them down. There has to be a better way. Somewhere you could share recommendations, beautifully. On ShelfTaught you can create a beautiful bookshelf of books you recommend in your interest areas. These get tagged automatically, and other users can endorse you for those areas. If you get endorsed in an area then you get expert points in that area and your book recommendations count for more than someone with no endorsements. If someone searches an area like 'rockets' on ShelfTaught, it takes all the books tagged 'rockets', then it adds up the expert points of the people who recommend those books, and gives you a list of books recommended by people with expert points; as well as some users to check out to discover more (just waiting on Elon 😊). By adding books, tagging, and endorsing each other, we can crowdsource wisdom! Key features: - A beautiful online bookshelf 📚 to fill you with shelf-confidence - easily shareable address - ability to embed elsewhere (like on your own site or blog) - Goodreads import - Niche book search, for shelf-exploration. - Wisdom isn't decided by popular vote. We rank books from people endorsed in a niche, so you're getting the experts' opinions. - Shelf-discovery - Discover people with similar interests and see what else they recommend, as well as getting endorsed for your contribution within your own interests. I'm here to discuss, and ready to hear ideas on how to improve the path to shelf-actualization!

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7yr ago

Dre Durr💡

Love the idea. How do you compete with Good Reads or Amazon? I am a literature snob. I ❤️ reading an incredible novel by an author that will use words with the same amount control as a maestro controlling the orchestra✨. My friends and I share our Amazon lists for book recommendations. Walk me though the curation process.

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7yr ago

Duncan Garde

ShelfTaught

Maker

@dredurr, thanks for the feedback and taking the time to comment! So, in terms of Amazon, there are a couple things: - I think the lists you share with your friends is a great way to use it, but that doesn't allow for discovery of people who aren't your friends, who may have similar tastes. But I can see that working well for a quote unquote closed group - In terms of Amazon reviews, the issue is you don't know whether the people rating the book actually know what they're talking about. When it's a fiction book that shouldn't matter maybe, but when it's non-fiction you would rather get a recommendation from someone in the field than the average Joe. I had a friend who bought a project management book off of Amazon and said it was waay to basic but it had a lot of 5 star reviews For Good Reads: - I think the best way of putting it is like this - If Good Reads is the facebook of books, we're aiming to be the LinkedIn. - The other way we're competing with Good Reads is just in design, trying to bring your books to the forefront and make it a more beautiful experience, but I still think we're not trying to compete with Good Reads head on. Curation: You recommend a book in gardening. That book gets tagged 'gardening' and 'health' maybe let's say. You can now be endorsed in both 'gardening' and 'health'. People you know endorse you 6 times for 'gardening' and 4 times for 'health'. Average Joe, Matt, and Lara also put up a different gardening book. They can also be endorsed for 'gardening' but no one thinks they know anything about gardening so they only get 1 endorsement each. I search in gardening, and your book recommendation comes up before the other book even though 3 people put up that book, why? Because your recommendation is weighted with the 6 endorsements you got vs. 3x1 endorsements for the others. Phew long reply, hope it helps!

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7yr ago

Dre Durr💡

@duncangarde very Dope 🚬🚬 Can you curate a list from people that are not part of the platform? For example Maria Popova from BrainPickings. I follow most of her recommendations. If she is not on the platform will I be able to find a “BrainPickings Recommendation” section?

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7yr ago

Duncan Garde

ShelfTaught

Maker

Hey @dredurr, not at present. But the next phase of ShelfTaught is to start curating some people's recommendations and add them as a 'tribute to' profile or similar, still thinking about the name hahaha, which would be where this would fit in perfectly. So yeah not yet but soon. Just to clarify, I'm assuming you mean that we (ShelfTaught) would curate BrainPickings, but do you mean that you, yourself would like the ability to curate someone else's collection?

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7yr ago

Tessa-Jean Tuttle

@duncangarde this is actually a reply helpful walk through - particularly the distinctions between value and functionality of shelftaught vs goodreads (& others). I learned a bit too, that I wasn't able to deduce with previous browsing. I hope you saved it to use again ;)

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7yr ago

Sarah Child

Brilliant idea come to life. The website is easy to navigate while the design is clean and aesthetically pleasing. The bookshelves are such a helpful way of organising and listing what you've read. Looking at other people's bookshelves is a fun way of finding what's good to read. I like that I can follow different people and the categories that I am interested in. It is both educative and enjoyable. A website for the personal and the processional.

Pros:

Awesome concept and beautiful execution

Cons:

Can't be blamed

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7yr ago

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