We love to customise our online spaces, don’t we?
After a request for help to find a way to display a book selection in the sidebar on an edublogs wordpress blog, I went hunting. WordPress doesn’t support the Library Thing widget right now, but that’s what we wanted to use.
Thanks to some code from the Library Thing forum and a bit of fiddling, we ended up with a My Book Collection widget on Danni’s The Butterfly Effect blog.
It has a static book jacket, and a random feed from the the profile’s catalogue. Basic for now, but does the job. You could do your own edits. Substitute your LibraryThing account name where I have inserted ‘accountname’, and of course your own image from your flickr account.
Code below:
<a href=”//www.librarything.com/catalog/accountname”><img src=”http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1415/1401347182_e689c40c0c_o.jpg”>
<a href=”http://www.librarything.com/catalog/accountname”>
<img src=”http://www.librarything.com/gwidget/widget.php?
view=accountname&&width=170&lheight=11;type=random&num=8&hbold=1
&ac=ac8834&tc=000000&bc=EEEEFF&fsize=8″>
</a>
judyoconnell.com 
As the recipient of this clever “Judy move” might I just add that Library Thing has made me almost embarassingly happy! I know we should not judge a book by cover yet I always find seeing book covers so much more inspiring than just viewing lists of titles. And yes, I guess the attraction is also partly due to the very real desire to personalise my blog. This to me is key as I believe a blog should reveal elements of the writer’s personality. Readers need to make a head and heart connection to the site! The greatest compliment paid to me so far on The Butterfly Effect blog – “Danni, it just looks so much like you.” 🙂 Thank you oh wise and wonderful Judy.