Popular computer blogger Jeff Atwood wrote a blog post recently, "Programmers Don't Read Books -- But You Should" (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archive...). In it he described why programmers should read, what they should read--and what they shouldn't. It includes a shot of his favorite-programming-books shelf, below.

My plan is this: Let's enter Jeff's books into LibraryThing. And let's do it from a photo of his library.

I think it can be done, and pretty well. Indeed, I think a photo of a shelf is about all you need for many libraries--particularly ones with all recent books.

Here's a shot of the books:



There's a closer shot of it here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/images/...

Lastly, I have a hunch that, for some of us, this will turn out to be fun. And some of us might be willing to do it again--for collections that are particularly interesting, for particularly worthy people and institutions, for people we know and, perhaps, for money for us or a charity. If someone paid $5-10 a shelf and all the money went to buy books for people in need, don't you think members would chip in?

Anyway, that's my idea. Feel free to take a piece of it. Don't take more than 1/4 of it, though. I want people to get a chance. The user account is JeffAtwood (http://www.librarything.com/profile/Jeff...) and the password is "coder".

I claim the left third of of the top bookshelf—from "The Visual Design of Quantitative Information" to "Software Requirements"

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 11:07am.

That was too easy. A few I wasn't sure about the edition but I think I probably got it right. One—Spolsky's interface book—changed covers without changing ISBNs. But I found a high-quality photo of the old cover, and uploaded it too.

I at least found it fun. Maybe others with more worried about getting the exact right edition will find that part harder.

Oh, I should say that Jeff was bully on this idea, and also agreed to become a LibraryThing author.

Tim, thanks for adding the last sentence ... in order to add books from people currently living, their permission should be obtained (which, to my mind, they're giving if they provide photos).

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 7:24am.

Hmm rather little overlap with my shelves and I can't see most of them as being of use for the working programmer.

Where is Fowler's Refactoring or Feathers's Working Effectively With Legacy Code or Bellin's The CRC Card Book or Kernighan's The Practice of Programming for a start (keeping to non-language specific books)?

Maybe we are just too far apart on the programming spectrum.

Strongly supporting message 3.
Anyone living should first be asked for their permission.

Imagine how they'd otherwise feel if they visited LT in a few months time and discovered someone had appropriated their name and published what may/may not be in their library.

Edited to remove excessive capitals :-)

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 7:55am.

> 3

I agree that living people should be asked for their permission. I completely disagree that posting an image of one's library on one's blog means that you are agreeing to let someone else use that information to create a library here.

Now, in this case, Tim got the guy's permission. But what about someone who doesn't even know LT exists? Or who prefers to catalogue her library somewhere else, or not at all? Perhaps she would prefer to catalogue only those books she has read, or perhaps some of the books in her photos are borrowed books, which she does not want in her catalogue.

I have posted images of some of my bookshelves elsewhere, and I can tell you right now that I would be furious if someone decided to create an account in my name on some other cataloguing site using those images as a source.

I claim middle of top shelf, from "More about Software Requirements" to "The Inmates are Running the Asylum."

ETA: Done with my part, but does anyone else see a super skinny book between 19 Deadly Sins... and Lean Software Development? I'm sure there's something there but can't make it out at all.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 10:44am.

>5

No, of course I agree. No entering books from living people without their consent. Or we could kill them first.

>6

I don't think we should catalog bookshelves we find here and there. Rather I'm thinking people who want to catalog their books can take a photo and post it.

Or people can find bookshelves and send a message asking if they want them cataloged. (Personally, I'd love to take a photo of my uncataloged books and get members to do them.)

What do you think of the motivation. Would you catalog books for charity? For an institution you love?

I think this would be a great opportunity to raise money for charity. Keeping with LT's subject, perhaps the charity should be literacy or book-availability focused. All my favorites for literacy are local or US-minded, but someone must have a good suggestion for an international charity.

Yes, that was what I had in mind. Something literacy-related.

--> 8

What do you think of the motivation. Would you catalog books for charity? For an institution you love

I have already agreed to do this for my rabbi's book collection of books for Nigeria as he revs up his project once again. I was particularly pleased when he told me that he started to do this on LibraryThing!

Great idea for how to catalog the books from home without bringing his whole collection home with me! :)

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 11:51am.

I'd help out for a literacy project in a heartbeat.

ETA - This guy officially rocks because he has Edward Tufte's books. Not only do I have a school-girl crush on the man, but he has an amazing way of articulating presentation style. Since taking his seminar years ago, I'm still applying items I've learned in my day-to-day job and look awesome without trying so hard.

Geek moment over. ^^

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 12:19pm.

>7 Yes, there is definitely a skinny book next to 19 Deadly Sins, but even when I blow it up I can't read the print on the spine, sorry.

I'd be willing to make Books for Nigeria one beneficiary.

Anyone have an idea how to coordinate this? I'm thinking we'll need a volunteer to track this to some extent. I don't think doing it all "in software" is going to work.

I'm thinking:

*We have a group, much like "I see Dead People's Books." The wiki could be used to track who's doing what.
*We have a small number of approved charities. Like 2-3. They need to have a PayPal account, so that payment emails can be sent to LT or the volunteer.
*People pay something per shelf. Maybe $3-6?

Frankly, I've also thought about hiring some low-wage workers (in India?) to do this instead, or using something like Amazon Mechanical Turk. Then, frankly, LT would make money. But I'm also interested in exploring doing this as a charity.

Maybe it could be an LT project, with x% of the revenue going to a picked charity per month.

Thinking out load.

Hey, if this is actually going to work, let's finish up JeffAtwood's library.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 1:25pm.

You may want to consider defining "shelf" by a rough book count as well. While I'm sure most people would quite willingly pay a small fee to have their books cataloged, some people will try to get as much for free as possible (as evidenced by some shelves here on LT). You could say $5 per average shelf (approx. 30-50 books per shelf).

For what it's worth, I use Charity Navigator to check out and evaluate charities I don't know before donating. It's an easy way to check out efficiency and projected longevity for some charities. Admittedly, not all charities are on there. Books for Nigeria looks good.

Edited to add that I just checked out Charity Navigator and their 5 featured charities of today (top right box) are charities that promote reading.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 2:01pm.

--> 14

I'd be willing to make Books for Nigeria one beneficiary.

Wow! That's very generous of you, Tim. Thank you.

You should probably contact Rabbi Howard Gorin directly at hdgorin4(at)yahoo(dot)com for an update on his current project (which is constantly in flux). I'd be more than happy to be the LT contact person.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 2:06pm.

Another good place to look (although admittedly not literacy/book related) might be Kiva -- that way the money raised can be used and reused over and over again (or cycled once or twice through Kiva and then given away permanently to a more conventional charity).

I love, love, love the idea of beneficiary charities for this site. I think active LT members will gladly jump in to work for charitiable money doing what they like to do best any way (i.e. cataloguing books).

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 2:16pm.

It includes a shot of his favorite-programming-books shelf, below.

My plan is this: Let's enter Jeff's books into LibraryThing. And let's do it from a photo of his library.

This seems strange to me. How can you call two shelves of someone's books on a specific subject their "library"? I'd rather have a different sort of cataloguing feature for collections like this, possibly just a list. I feel like LT is straying farther from complete individual collections and more into... other stuff, and that it could eventually do serious damage to the recommendation features that are at the core of the site.

These are his real books. They are one section of his books. Many users just catalog a subset—their work books, for example. Anyway, the idea was to catalog them and then hand the account over to him—an idea he likes. He might add more, or not.

In this case, I can only see recommendations being much improved. These books have an internal consistency. They're very thought-through (with a blog post to describe their coherence). They are basically programming books with a methodological non-technical bent. They make a lot of sense together.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 2:32pm.

Edited to remain on track & to keep this suggestion...

Heck, I know I learned about this site from Neil Gaiman's blog and he flat-out said he thought it was a great idea that he didn't have time for. I wonder how he'd feel if approached by this program...especially if the offer went to CBLDF...

And to expand...there have to be other authors in this same position with pet book-based charities that they'd like to see benefit while getting additional publicity via LT.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 2:47pm.

Okay, I'm stepping in. PLEASE let's not get sidetracked in this way. The "what-is-LibraryThing" conversation is a sensitive one (and, while well within the TOS, message 21 was not exactly designed to avoid causing sensitivity). We're not going to solve it here. Let's keep the focus on the proposal.

The problem with Gaiman is that we promised to catalog every book in his library if he invited us to. Abby, Sonya and I would sleep on his lawn.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 2:46pm.

I will bring a sleeping bag as well, if it's a standing offer...

=)

ETA - although the CBLDF may be a new angle. Plus, the Gordon Lee case cost them over 100K and they're always looking for more donations because more states and/or morally-outraged organizations are basically looking to bankrupt the "evil doer" rather than win the case legit...

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 2:50pm.

Well, I can't see what exactly was said that should be avoided, but I think this is still relevant to the thread:

I really like the idea of cataloguing someone's entire library for charity. I think everyone would benefit from that. I also think it's fine for individual users to catalogue a subset of their books if that's what they choose to do. But I don't think sub-collections should be actively encouraged. I hope this program will focus on cataloguing complete libraries rather than a couple of shelves.

In this case, I can only see recommendations being much improved. These books have an internal consistency.

The thing is, they'll only improve the recommendations for the obvious kind of books. If I'm looking at one programming book and want recommendations for more programming books, great. This book will improve those recommendations. But if most people who own a certain programming book also own, say, Cryptonomicon, I'll be less likely to see that. And recommendations like that, the ones that go beyond a specific category of books and get at some deeper similarity of taste, are some of the most interesting.

Your point about the recommendations is well taken, although this isn't the best example insofar as these books really are non-obvious. It's not someone's Ian Flemming collection, but an intelligent collection of programming books—and some non-programming books with something to say to the programmer. But, yes, I see your point.

That said, the recommendation algorithm tends to bias against crossing the fiction/non-fiction line. While it's true that programmers read cyberpunk and Dilbert books, when you show them in a list of recommendations, people think there's something wrong with the list. (Ditto the weird concentration—it may no longer hold—of wicca books among people with the latest version of "Our Bodies Ourselves"!)

Right now, I want to know:

1. With only 23 books cataloged, this is looking like a good thing to talk about, but perhaps not to do?
2. Anyone suggest another charity--particularly a non-religious one. I'm glad to have Squeakychu's charity benefit, but we can't go live with a single religious charity. (Hey, I have no problem with it, but I can see the atheist group getting steamed!)

For kids?

There's always First Book which promises $11 worth of books for every dollar donated to give books to low-income children.

I'll also plug (again!) the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund only because I bet these guys would be willing to partner with LT and kind of help get some LT Authors on board.

1. With only 23 books cataloged, this is looking like a good thing to talk about, but perhaps not to do?
ith
I think it depends entirely on whose library it is and what sort of books it includes. I'm guessing that far, far more people would be interested in cataloguing Gaiman's library than Atwood's. Also, if it were for charity, I think even people who had never heard of Atwood and didn't care about programming would be willing to participate.

2. I like stephmo's idea of a charity that gives books to low-income children.

And, to stray from the topic just a bit, don't the different recommendation algorithms vary in how they handle the fiction/non-fiction divide? I'd hope that when I looked at "users with this book also have..." it would make absolutely no difference whether the book was fiction or non-fiction.

I think this is a neat idea. I'll start at the bottom right and add some.

I like this idea a lot and I would really love to see if there was a way to use it to help send books to New Orleans and other Katrina hit areas. I grew up in N.O. and in jefferson parish libraries and while I don't think many of those suffered much damage the idea of wounded N.O. libraries breaks my heart.

And while I think Dead people's books is awesome, I'm reluctant to get in on too much cataloging action because I'm afraid of the manual add. I think I've used it for one of my books. I think I'd fair much better with living people's libraries.

Edit: However, I do agree with Zoe on encouraging larger, more complete libraries. But maybe if we get someone started off, they'll get the LT bug and keep adding?

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 3:38pm.

1. With only 23 books cataloged, this is looking like a good thing to talk about, but perhaps not to do?

Good question. I zipped through 13 and have been surprised no one else started going on the rest. I think part of the problem may be the thread location/title--when I initially saw it in Talk I assumed it would be some newbie asking a question about who knows what. Also, like you always say, weekend traffic is lower and Talk is definitely quieter.

I think if you publicized it more and especially if it were charity-related it would be pretty popular. I don't see any reason it should be less people than the dead people--interest in a famous person and interest in the type of charitable work available should pretty much even out over the community, I'd say.

> 29: The ALA's Hurricane Relief fund ( http://www.ala.org/ala/cro/katrina/katri... ) was the first thing I thought of!

And this sounds like a great idea - when I get a bit less rushed I'd love to take part.

There's a book on the bottom right that has a plain white spine. Other than that, my chunk is done. I added until I ran into a chunk somebody else was working on.

Message edited by its author, May 4, 2008, 5:37pm.

I think the lack on enthusiasm may also have to do with all the books being about programming. I'm not really interested in cataloging these since I don't know much about programming so the library's not interesting to me. (Well, I know about Edward Tufte, but that's infographics.)

So, my plan isn't to catalog famous living people's libraries by request, but to allow people to have their library cataloged by taking pictures of it. Basically, skip the hassle of cataloging by taking some photos and giving money to charity.

Does this clarify/change?

Yes, it clarifies. It doesn't really change much; it still depends partially on whether the books are interesting or not, and I still think some people would be willing to catalogue even books that they aren't interested in if it's for charity.

#25

The problem isn't that the charity is run by a religious organisation as such, but the entire point of it seems to be to benefit that religion's adherents by sending prayer books and the like.

#26

I'm a bit confused by First Book their website says $10 gets 4 new books.

As a non-US alternative how about Book Aid International for the charity? Same sort of deal in that £1.25 gets a book to someone in the third world. They have a fair bit of visibility at the big literary festivals in the UK.

>36 First book is referring to an "up to" retail price vs. what you donate. In one photo, you see a child holding up Where are You Going? To My Friends House! which retails for $19.95. This is more common than we know. Even the innocuous If You Give a Mouse a Cookie retails for $15.99. In donating $10, 4 new books could be $40 retail if you consider the first book I mentioned. That's a pretty great return considering they take the books directly to kids. I also must admit it's more than even with the 4 for £5 that Book Aid International offers.

In this age of internet, we forget there are families with little to no access to the internet. For them, there is no deep-discount Amazon. There isn't an extra $25 to save on shipping costs in the budget. There are families without cars, so that trip to the out-of-the way bookstore with great remainders on kids book isn't always an option. In many areas, there isn't always a great library system to visit. In many homes, First Book is really the only book that entire home owns.

I guess my Comic Book Legal Defense Fund isn't getting any love, eh?

As much as I believe that everyone deserves books, I tend to focus on basics for third-world. In particular, I like Heifer. This organization allows you to send live animals that become a source of income and/or renewable source of food for families that allow them self-sufficiency. (You don't always have to donate animals if you don't like that sort of thing.)

I feel like we forget that books are often considered a luxury by working families in our own countries.

I am a little surprised that the library system is so poor in the US. Although there are poor people in the UK (just as in the US) the number of poor people who do not have access to a library (even if it is only a mobile library) is vanishingly small. There is more a problem with encouraging such families to read, to appreciate books and what they can do for the children but then we get into the arena of literacy support (as the parents may not have adult reading ability themselves).

I also wasn't suggesting that First Book was giving a bad deal - my Book Aid was a suggestion for those who might prefer a third world book charity - and I certainly see education and books as a way for people to break free of the cycle of poverty whether that is in the first or third world. Also I feel that in the third world each book is likely to form part of an informal library system and not be restricted to one family.

The CBLDF is also a pretty good charity albeit very specialised which may be why it isn't getting a lot of support.

Books for Africa looks good. Books For Africa is a 501(c )(3) nonprofit organization serving as the largest shipper of donated textbooks to the African continent. Books For Africa has shipped over 19 million primary, secondary, post-secondary, and community library books to 37 countries since 1988. Charity Navigator says that 99.2% of funds go into the program, with only .3% for administrative expenses.

A charity that I know and like is Children's Literacy Initiative. It is a US-based program that provides training to teachers on the best ways to promote and teach reading to pre-K to 3rd grade students. They work with in need, low-achieving elementary schools, trying to provide the assistance necessary to fight illiteracy at the early educational stages.

Just followed a link to here from the legacy libraries group. I think it's a great idea.

Also, have finished off the LHS on the bottom shelf of Jeff's library. Only took the last 15 minutes in bed before I have to get ready for work. I believe that completes the library: I count 61 readable books (the super slim book next to 19 Deady Sins and the sheer white one, two in from the botrom right, I'm counting as unreadable) and 61 in Jeff's library.

See http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2...

I've changed Jeff's password. It's his account now. Thanks to everyone for their help.

For a literacy charity, I suggest Dolly Parton's Imagination Library:

http://www.imaginationlibrary.com/

with information on how it works:

http://www.dollysimaginationlibrary.com/...

You can make all the jokes you want about DP, but this group... & others who get books into the hands of children... I like them.

Personal note: I don't know the "reputation" beyond this group... what the ratio of money given to money/books going out (basically percentage of money on administration to donations) but others have posted links to "ratings" and that information can be found there.

41: He still needs to list whatever that blank white book is. :)