If you’re an Amazon customer, you can now add "well-fed" to your status of "well-read." Amazon began testing a new service on its site last week. Visitors can browse consumer and industrial catalogs as well as menus from restaurants in six cities. Users may also post reviews for both for items in the catalog and the catalogs themselves.

To access the catalogs, go to the Amazon home page at http://www.amazon.com and click on "see more stores" to the right of the menu tabs. Listings with the word "Beta" after them indicate the new catalog and menu sections. A "Submit a Catalog" tab takes you to a page with instructions on how to suggest a catalog to Amazon's team. Spokesperson Carrie Peters said they are actively looking for more catalog providers and restaurants.

The catalog test is similar to the "Look inside the Book" feature that Amazon now offers on the site. That feature allows visitors to see sample Tables of Content and pages from selected books.

Current catalogs on Amazon include Tiffany, Cartier, Moore Medical Supply and Brisky Pet Products. Select restaurant menus are provided for New York, Boston, Washington DC, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle.

Carrie Peters said the test is going very well, and they are getting a very positive response. When asked to compare the service to Google's catalog search, introduced in beta test in December (http://catalogs.google.com), Peters said, "We don't focus on competitors at Amazon, we focus on our customers." Sound like a recipe for success?