I am an avid Goodreads user and am usually logged in to my account when working at the information desk. I love being able to use Goodreads as a tool to jog my memory when assisting a customer and as a way to keep up with new titles. Most of my shelves relate to themes, reading levels, or interests that I can use when offering readers' services. Being friends with colleagues is also a great help. I can't (and don't) read everything, especially when it comes to certain genres, but I have great friends who do. One former colleague has a love of historical fiction and writes beautiful, thoughtful reviews, while another reads romance novels voraciously. Being able to browse their shelves keeps me up to date on titles I don't personally read and also helps me offer suggestions to customers.
In terms of recommendations, I find the genre recommendations to be good and usually the one-for-one recommendations (i.e. you read Book X, so you should read Book Y next). The recommendations by shelf, however, tend to be all over the place. Since the algorithm has no understanding of the name of the shelf or the reason you grouped these items, it recommends based on one or more books labeled with that shelf. As a result, my "scary" shelf where I tag anything from kids' ghost stories to horror recommends The Art of Fiction by Henry James and The Year of the Book by Andrea Cheng alongside scary titles.
Recommendation for a colleague: This colleague enjoyed reading a lot of narrative non-fiction, particularly books set in exotic locales or focused on a single extraordinary individual. Based on these books, I recommended she try Jill Fredston's Rowing to Latitude: Journeys along the Arctic's Edge or Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls.
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