1,512 libraries in LibraryThing for Libraries

LibraryThing for Libraries, our enhancements to public and academic library catalogs, continues to advance. The official list shows some 159 "libraries" getting our tags, recommendations and reviews in their catalogs. But many of those 159 "libraries" are really much larger systems.

So, we thought we'd figure out how many individual libraries were using LibraryThing for Libraries, and add them all to LibraryThing Local. It wasn't until we started searching out every member library of every consortium and adding every branch to LibraryThing Local that we realized we had WAY more libraries than we had thought: 1,512!

Some of the biggies include ALS/RSA in Illinois, with over 250 member libraries, NOBLE in Massachusetts, with 28, and the King County Library System in Washington, with 43. Over in Australia, the State Library of Tasmania pretty much covers the island, with some 50 libraries.

LTFL in LibraryThing Local. To get this number, we had to add all the libraries to LibraryThing Local. All LibraryThing for Libraries members get this badge:



We have some other plans for this, of course. But for now we're going to sit back—and dream about an around-the-world trip to visit all of them...

LTFL: now available for Evergreen

We've been working on adding the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements to the open-source catalog Evergreen. We've worked out the kinks, and it's ready to roll.

We've integrated both the Catalog Enhancements (tags, tag browser, recommendations, other editions and translations) and the Reviews Enhancement (300,000 LibraryThing reviews, patron reviewing, Facebook app, blog widgets).

If you'd like to see how LTFL looks, check out the catalog of Kent County, Maryland. We owe them a thousand thanks for working with us on making this work.

LTFL: Non-ISBN Matching

Short Story. We've been going through so many big changes at LibraryThing lately that we let a pretty substantial improvement go by without giving it the fanfare it deserves: the LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) Cataloging Enhancements now pick up many non-ISBN items. All LibraryThing for Libraries libraries will see better coverage (5-15%), and academic libraries with older materials should be especially pleased:

Some examples:

• An 1819 edition of Don Quixote, in Spanish at Bowdoin College
• A 1952 edition of Tom Jones from King County Library System
• A cassette audio recording of Great Expectations from the Great River Regional Library
  

The coolest thing about the LibraryThing office: Need a photo of an old book? Grab iphone, swivel chair 180 degrees and shoot. Second coolest thing: The only hot Web 2.0 company with a 1774 edition of Terence.

Long Story. Our enhancements usually run on the basis of the ISBN. ISBNs are easy to pick out of the HTML without knowing the structure of the page ( /[0-9Xx]{10,13}/*, if you speak regular expressions*), and most books have them, so they're our primary way of knowing what content to load for a particular page.

However, as a part of our reviews enhancement, we developed a JavaScript library called the LibraryThing Connector that, among other things, screen-scrapes the title and author of the book out of the HTML. This is what allows our reviews to work on any item a library owns, whether or not it is in LibraryThing or has an ISBN. It's tricky stuff, because it requires specific code for every type of library software that we provide reviews for.

To get title-matching therefore, we take the title and author extracted by the Connector and feed it to our own "What Work" fuzzy matching API. Of course, this method is far from foolproof, so we err on the side of caution, only loading enhancement data if we've got a strong match on both the title and the author. We haven't seen any false positives yet, but even with being pretty strict about matching, based on real world stats, we're able to provide around 5-15% more content in the catalog. Academic libraries will get more of a boost out of this, because they tend to have a lot more non-ISBN items than public libraries.

We did this because it's fun and useful and kind of magic, but more importantly because we want to constantly improve our products. LibraryThing for Libraries is a subscription service. Every year when it is time for a library to renew with us, we want it to be clear that they're getting something better from us than they were a year ago, and that even better things are in store for the future. It's more fun and challenging for us that way, but it's also something we know works pretty well as a business strategy too.

In my mind a big reason why LibraryThing.com has succeeded is that a membership comes with an expectation of improvement. We don't call a membership an investment, but you get to expect that you will be able to do more and better and cooler things with LibraryThing over time, and that it will become more valuable to you. As a result of this, our members become deeply involved in the site and how it works, and if a LibraryThing membership is a great investment, members end up making an even greater investment of their knowledge and enthusiasm right back. It's a great thing to be a part of, so I hope it's a philosophy we can keep bringing to the library world as well. — Casey

*Pace Casey, who wrote this post, ISBNs are/([0-9]{9}[0-9X}|97[89][0-9]{10})/i !

LibraryThing for Libraries at ALA: new features and hungry rhinos

Are you ready for this?

Tim and I will be at the American Library Association's annual conference this year. We have new, new LTFL features to show off. You can find us at booth 2857 in the exhibit hall.

1. New features! We'll be demoing our new catalog enhancers - never before seen by librarians. We'll post an announcement all about the new features in a day or two.

2. An art installation! Yeah, you'll just have to wait and see it. I can't even describe it, other than to say that it takes away ennui.

3. More rhinos! Tim and I are both flying to Chicago with an inflatable rhino in our luggage. We plan on playing "Toss the Rhino", and perhaps if we are feeling extra daring, "Pass the Rhinos".

(Thanks to Brixton for the masticating rhino photo. The rhino tossing one's mine. That's Tim and Casey putting some English on the rhino.)

Category Feature Added to LTFL Reviews

We've added a new feature to the LibraryThing for Libraries Reviews Enhancement: the ability to categorize reviews for the blog widget.

Thus far, library patrons have been able to write reviews and rate books in their library's catalog, add their reviews to their Facebook page and even create a widget that lets them show off their reviews on blogs and websites.

Now, libraries can show off reviews written by their patrons for specific library programs. Patrons and librarians can add categories to a review. The library can then create blog widgets with said categories – keep track of reviews for the Summer Reading Program, One Book, One City and book discussion groups.

This should be helpful all year round, but the inspiration for the feature came from a librarian's request to manage the reviews children were going to be writing for the summer reading program at their library. They wanted some way to display the reviews separately from the rest of the reviews coming in.

Anyone who's bought the Reviews Enhancement can use this feature starting immediately. Read here for instructions how to add and use it.

If you'd like more information about LTFL, and the enhancements that can take your OPAC from Library 1.0 to Library 2.0 overnight, fill out the interest form on the LTFL page.

The Reviews Enhancement isn't available for all OPACs – currently, it supports Horizon, iBistro, iLink, eLibrary, Webvoyage, Voyager 7, WebPac, WebPac Pro and Koha. More are coming soon!

LTFL Reviews: you stand 300,000 deep

At the end of May, we reached 300,000 reviews vetted and available for LibraryThing for Libraries!

We'd previously been bragging about having 250,000 reviews, so here's my core sample: at the beginning of April, we had 24 reviews for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Now, we have 74. Of course, popular books will get more reviews, but trust me – we also cover the long, long tail of library collections.


The LTFL Reviews Enhancement is currently available for Horizon, iBistro, Webvoyage, Voyager 7, Koha, WebPac and WebPac Pro. The LTFL Catalog Enhancements are available for practically every OPAC. Contact us for more info.

Improved support for Koha

Setting up LibraryThing for Libraries in Koha is now a only couple of clicks away!

The 3.2 version of Koha (which isn't out yet) will include the improved integration for LTFL. If you are using Koha without a host, and run on the bleeding edge, you can try it now via Git.

What this does is enable and disable LTFL through the Koha Enhanced Content system preference page. Simply enter your LTFL account number (found on your LibraryThing for Libraries Account page), decide where you'd like LTFL content to display (in tabs or under other bibliographic details) and enable it. No need to edit Koha templates.

The work to make this possible was initiated by me and extended and improved by Chris Hyde of East Brunswick Public Library. Thanks, Chris!

LTFL webinar by WiLS

There will be a webinar* on LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) from Wisconsin Library Services (WiLS).

Details: Thursday April 9th, 2009, 2:00 - 3:00 pm, Central Time
Blog post here | Sign-up info here

Jenny Schmidt (SWITCH consortium) and Ingrid Lebolt (Arlington Heights Memorial Library) will be explaining "how LTFL works and detail the process of implementing LTFL features into your library's catalog (Web Opac)." WiLS hosts a series of webinars for libraries.

Note: this is one in a series of webinars, all which cost smallish amounts of money.

Both speakers work at libraries using LTFL (see the whole list here). I have a long-standing love for the Arlington Heights library. They were an early adopter of LTFL, and of good things in general. Here's their LibraryThing Local page, and a picture of me standing outside their building (to corroborate my story). The far-away half of my family lived there, and I grew up going to AHML when I'd visit.



*definition of 'web conference/webinar'

LibraryThing at Computers In Libraries 2009

LibraryThing, your favorite makers of libraries in computers, will be at Computers in Libraries this week. We'll be passing out free stuff and showing off our new LibraryThing for Libraries feature so if you're at CIL, stop by booth 214 and say hi. Unfortunately, we're rhino-less this time, but we do have T-shirts and laptop stickers (and Tim.)

Our new feature allows our catalog enhancements to run even on items that don't have an ISBN. Check it out in action on this 1948 edition of Tom Jones, or this 1937 edition of David Copperfield

There's no ISBN on those items, but our code is still smart enough to load the right tags and recommendations info. It uses a combination of our new What Work API and the LibraryThing Connector (the JavaScript that powers LTFL) to pull title and author information out of the catalog's HTML and then match it against our system. This new feature should help our academic libraries in particular, since they tend to have a lot of older pre-ISBN books.

Polaris support for LibraryThing for Libraries

Following on yesterday's announcement of Koha support, we're happy to announce that LibraryThing for Libraries catalog enhancements are now available for Polaris OPACs.

First off, we probably owe the Polaris people a public apology for this being such a long time coming. They first contacted me about integrating LTFL in their systems a year and a half ago, when we only had 5 or 6 customers. One of their libraries had asked about it, and as a company, they've decided to be incredibly responsive to the cutting edge things their libraries want to do. They've kept pushing us (on behalf of their customers), even as technical and non-technical obstacles (mostly non-technical) have prevented us from seeing it through.

It's a great corporate philosophy, and far too rare in the library world. Now that everybody takes our phone calls and wants to work with us, they deserve a lot of credit from being down from day one. It's unsurprising to me that they scored among the highest customer satisfaction of any commercial ILS vendor in a recent poll; clearly service is a high priority for them.

Want to see the catalog enhancements in action? Here are a couple of examples from our first Polaris customer to go live, Glendora Public Library: (dogs), (fantasy). Several more Polaris libraries are testng it.

Because of the way Polaris' system works, you currently have to press the LibraryThing button to get the content for a particular item. In the next version of Polaris, not only with LTFL be installable without editing any template files, but there will be no LibraryThing button; our content will load when somebody clicks on the "full display" button. So far, we haven't added review support, but we're happy to do it if there are interested customers.

Currently we have two installation options: the first only requires a single line of code to be added to your templates, but it does the LibraryThing button instead of loading with the details. This is what Glendora is using. The other installation option (provided by an engineer at Polaris) requires more involved editing of their templates but makes the current version of Polaris work with LTFL like the forthcoming version will.

Interested in getting LibraryThing for Libraries for your Polaris catalog? Contact us through the Interested? form.

Koha Support / Introducing Chris Catalfo

LibraryThing for Libraries, our innovative project to put tags, recommendation, reviews and other great enhancements inside the library catalog, now supports Koha.

You can see a quick demo of LibraryThing for Libraries/Koha integration.

The "library" has only seven books and is not as "pretty" as it could be. And there's some question whether to integrate our tags into Koha's tags--sometimes worse, sometimes better. But anyway, the beauty is all underneath—our code brings LibraryThing content into Koha seamlessly and rapidly.

Koha (www.koha.org), is the first and most popular open-source ILS (Integrated Library System). Started in New Zealand, Koha development is a community affair, but it's spearheaded by LibLime in the US. LibLime also provides support services for Koha, and develops other open-source products.

Koha (and LibLime) are emblematic of the positive changes that have been dawning over libraryland. It's hard for technical people outside the library "industry" to imagine how backward library tech generally is—a layered mess of proprietary, stone-age solutions maintained by a dysfunctional relationship between vendors and libraries. Koha stands at the head of efforts to change that.

LibLime's most audacious and hopeful project is not Koha, but ‡Biblios* (‡Biblios.org) and ‡Biblios.net (‡Biblios.net), respectively an open-source cataloging application and an open-data repository of bibliographic records. ‡Biblios was started by Chris Catalfo for the 2007 Google Summer of Code.

In essense, ‡Biblios is an open-source answer to OCLC Connexion, and ‡Biblios.net is an open-data answer to OCLC's WorldCat. LibLime is too politic to state things so clearly, but together ‡Biblios and ‡Biblios.net are a serious challenge to that dysfunctional monopoly. (For background see my OCLC posts; for more on ‡Biblios see this blog post or this LJ article.)

Introducing Chris Catalfo! The Koha integration was done by LibraryThing's newest employee, the aforementioned Chris Catalfo (member: ccatalfo), of ‡Biblios fame.

Chris joins LibraryThing from LibLime. (The two companies are still friends, we promise.) Before LibLime, Chris worked at the Johns Hopkins and UNCW libraries, and got his MLS at North Carolina Central University.** He also has a masters in Italian Literature, and lived in Florence, Italy. (He fits right in at LibraryThing; his favorite book is Historical Linguistics and Language Change!) He now lives in western Connecticut.

Chris is going to be working on LibraryThing for Libraries and on library data issues generally. He's a library-technology nerd par excellence. As he put it to me, "I like library technology so much I put up a Z39.50 server to search my blog." (Try it at chriscatalfo.com:2100/blog.)

The goal in hiring Casey, our first library developer, was to ramp up the library data generally. We did add more sources, and our MARC parsing got better, but we never took full advantage of the data. Casey is working on a number of projects to do just that.

---

*‡Biblios presents me, a typography nerd, with a rare opportunity—even necessity—of using the double dagger, or diesis. It gives me real pleasure. Should LibraryThing change its name to ‡LibraryThing?
**Chris is our third full-time MLS-card-carrying librarian; Abby and Sonya also have their MLSs. Abby and Chris both have two masters degrees, the bastards. Giovanni and Chris both speak Italian.

Bowker/CIG news..

Over on the main blog, I wrote a long post about LibraryThing CIG/Bowker deal. It's an excellent deal.

Read the details here.

LTFL Reviews now works with iBistro and Voyager catalogs

When we decided to add Reviews as an enhancement to LibraryThing for Libraries, we wanted to work on just a few OPACs at a time.

Otherwise, it would be 2010 before we finished Reviews (and no one wanted that). We started with Horizon Information Portal and WebPac, for a number of reasons*. Next, we decided to get iBistro and Voyager† on board.

We've had a couple of iBistro libraries add the Reviews Enhancement, but no Voyager libraries are live yet. You can check out the full list here.


* We knew the systems well, many libraries use them, and who doesn't like saying HIP?
† I can't talk about that particular OPAC without pronouncing it 'vee-ger' in my head. I'm pretty sure it's just me.

Randolph County Public Library wins award for using LTFL

Congratulations are in order for the very hip (pun intended for you OPAC geeks) Randolph County Public Library for receiving the Outstanding Library Service Innovation Award from the North Carolina Public Library Directors Association (NCPLDA) for their implementation of LibraryThing for Libraries.

They also won the Outstanding Library Promotional Project Award for their electronic newsletter and email alert service.

Well done, Randolph County Public Library!

UPDATE: Coverage in the Randolph Guide newspaper.

New: Recent library reviews widget

Following on the release of LibraryThing for Libraries' new Reviews Enhancement, I've created a widget for libraries to show off their most recent reviews.

These are the three libraries that are live so far.

Recent reviews from High Plains Library District Library home page | Get this widget

Recent reviews from Los Gatos Public Library Library home page | Get this widget

Recent reviews from Mount Laurel Library Library home page | Get this widget

Update: Our Mount Laurel is having some trouble with book titles. We'll fix it soon.

Internet Librarian—help!

This blog rarely hosts up-to-the-minute reportage, but here it is: Internet Librarian is a bust!

Most everyone we see loves LibraryThing for Libraries and our new reviews feature (announced today)—but nobody's here! There are only two rows for exhibitors, and attendees aren't walking them. According to an unnamed source—unnamed because I don't know his name—attendance is way down this year.

So, if you're here, come by! We'd love to show you the remarkable new system we've built. And we've got laptop stickers, t-shirts and cuecats to give out. And we've got nothing to do tonight either. Last night Sonya and I had a business meeting at a Denny's.

Don't make us do that again!
Update: Things looked up for about 30 minutes.

Introducing Reviews for LibraryThing for Libraries!

We've just released a new feature for LibraryThing for Libraries: Reviews. We've been working on this for months, and are itching to show it to you. (If you're at Internet Librarian in Monterey, come by the booth for a full demonstration.)

The idea is simple:

• Your library patrons get to review anything in your library.
• Libraries share reviews, so a critical mass can build.
• Implementation is absurdly simple—one short piece of JavaScript added to the catalog template. Period.

The "extras" send it into orbit:

• It comes with 200,000 high-quality, vetted reviews from LibraryThing.
• Your patrons get blog widgets and a Facebook application to show off their reviews—and their love for their library. Don't get why this is great? Keep reading.

Check it out. Three libraries are currently showing reviews, together with the other LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements--similar books, tags and other editions and translations. Click on the reviews wording (see above) to launch the reviews "lightbox."

• Los Gatos Public Library (California)
• High Plains Library District (Colorado)
• Mount Laurel Library (New Jersey)

Reviews in your catalog. The reviews wording shows up on all detail pages--not just books. You can also elect to show reviews on "search" or "list" pages. (Neither Los Gatos or High Plains have done this.)

LibraryThing for Libraries is not an "external" service. Everything happens in the catalog, not on some external site. "Reviews" works the same way. Like the rest of LTFL, it loads after the rest of the page, so it doesn't slow it down.

Lightbox magic. Other reviews solutions have either put showing and editing reviews in an external window--kludgy and likely to trigger pop-up alerts--or shoe-horned reviews into the catalog page, mucking it up and subjecting reviews to space and style constraints.

We decided to do something different, putting reviews in a "lightbox," like our Tag browser. This combines the best of both solutions--in-place action and a rock-solid, stylish look. Reviews are in the catalog, but they aren't imprisoned by it.

Two-hundred thousand LibraryThing reviews. We think LibraryThing for Libraries reviews, especially with our widgets and Facebook app., are going to push patron reviewing to a new level. But the fact remains that no library project has yet managed to get patrons reviewing on the scale of an Amazon or a LibraryThing. And nothing kills people's incentive to review than a desert--like restaurants, emptiness begets emptiness and success success.

So we're kicking in over 200,000 LibraryThing reviews--gently vetted by LibraryThing staff.

These 200,000 reviews put LibraryThing miles ahead of our only "reviews" competitor, Chilifresh. They doesn't release totals, but their numbers are low. Here for example are Chilifresh vs. LibraryThing for Libraries numbers for the last eight Pulitzer winners:

Pulitzer Prize winners		Chilifresh	LibraryThing
2008	The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz	1 review	24 reviews
2007	The Road by Cormac McCarthy	8 reviews	199 reviews
2006	March by Geraldine Brooks	1 review	50 reviews
2005	Gilead by Marilynne Robinson	0 reviews	45 reviews
2004	The Known World by Edward P. Jones	1 review	40 reviews
2003	Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides	1 review	120 reviews
2002	Empire Falls by Richard Russo	1 review	32 reviews
2001	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon	1 review	69 reviews
2000	Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri	0 review	27 reviews

When push comes to shove, you don't need 199 reviews. But Putlizer winners are popular books. When a popular book has 199 reviews, less popular books will have five or ten. Conversely, if Gilead and Interpreter of Maladies can't get a review, the rare stuff definitely won't have it.

Want to blog that table? (I wish you would. It took me forever to make.) Here's the HTML.

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" style="padding: 2px; border: 2px solid #CCCCCC"><tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;" colspan="2"><b>Pulitzer Prize winners</b></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><b>Chilifresh</b></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><b>LibraryThing</b></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE; vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2008</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</i> by Junot Diaz</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=1594489580">1 review</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=1594489580">24 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2007</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>The Road</i> by Cormac McCarthy</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0307265439">8 reviews</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0307265439">199 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE; vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2006</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>March</i> by Geraldine Brooks</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0143036661">1 review</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0670033359">50 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2005</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>Gilead</i> by Marilynne Robinson</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=031242440X">0 reviews</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=9780312424404">45 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE; vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2004</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>The Known World</i> by Edward P. Jones</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0060557559">1 review</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0060557559">40 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2003</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>Middlesex</i> by Jeffrey Eugenides</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0312422156">1 review</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0312422156">120 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE; vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2002</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>Empire Falls</i> by Richard Russo</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0375726403">1 review</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0375726403">32 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2001</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay</i> by Michael Chabon</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0312282990">1 review</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=0312282990">69 reviews</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE; vertical-align: top;"><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;">2000</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><i>Interpreter of Maladies</i> by Jhumpa Lahiri</td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://ipac.slco.lib.ut.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=039592720X">0 review</a></td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding: 2px 10px 2px 2px;"><a href="http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ipac20/ipac.jsp?index=ISBNEX&term=039592720X">27 reviews</a></td></tr></table>

My reviews at Los Gatos Public Library

My reviews | My library

Blog widgets and Facebook application. I do a lot of talking about "User Generated Content" (a horrible, dehumanizing phrase). Again and again I hit one point that--I think--Library 2.0 too often misses: User Generated Content isn't about "getting something"--it's about giving something.

People don't review books to help a library, or even their community. They do it to get something back--a record of what they read and an opportunity to express themselves--and express themselves to the people they know.

This means two things. First, unlike some other systems, we made sure every member had a page--and one with a permanent link, so they could send it to friends. And second, it meant that we make sure patrons could showcase their reviews outside of their library catalog, where they "live" on the web. Both options are available from review members' "settings" page.



Check out LibraryThing for Libraries' "Reviews at My Library" on Facebook in the screen-shot. (The application is here, but you need to have a Facebook membership to get to it.) Here's the blog widget in action:

More soon. I've got to run to our booth at Internet Librarian, but I'll blog more soon. LibraryThing members will want to know how the two systems connect.*

*Members can opt-out of their reviews being seen in libraries--just edit your profile, although, because of caching, changes are not immediate.

LibraryThing at Internet Librarian / Reviews at My Library

We'll be at Internet Librarian in Monterey, CA, Monday-Wednesday. We're at booth 316, in the boonies, I think.

We'll be showing off LibraryThing for Libraries and our new "Reviews at my Library."

We're going to blog "Reviews at My Library" on Monday or Tuesday, but you can take a sneak peak at reviews in action at High Plains Library District or Los Gatos Public Library.

Rhino sick, LibraryThing well

If you're at ALA, come by the LibraryThing booth (2878) and learn about putting tags, patron reviews and recommended books into your library catalog.

Also, help us find the hole in the rhino and blow it up again!

LibraryThing at ALA—with reviews in your catalog!

I've only brought one rhino this time—two rhinos cut down on the standing room—but the rhino and I will be at ALA 2008 in Anaheim (booth 2878), showing off LibraryThing for Libraries.

I'll be showing off our new reviews feature, which allow any library to add patron-reviewing to their OPAC, with review sharing between libraries and a base of 200,000 librarian-approved reviews from LibraryThing.

I think it's going to be a big deal. With luck, I'll get a screencast about it out before morning...

The Nifty Fifty

We've just hit our first major milestone: there are now 50 libraries using LibraryThing for Libraries. See the full list here. For a visual representation of what may be the opposite of LibraryThing for Libraries, but of the same number, look to the right.

We're also pleased that number 50 is Portland Public Library, in LibraryThing's hometown. We attended the implementation, and we're happy to say that their bouncing baby catalog enhancements are doing just fine.

These first 50 libraries include early innovators like Seattle Public Library and San Francisco State University. It was satisfying to hear prospective libraries say they watch these innovators for emerging technology to look into, and that's how they found out about us. Three cheers for word of blog.

We're convinced that LTFL is a highly enriching supplement to the white bread that is the standard online catalog and we're happy that we can create something that meshes with OPACs to make them more functional.

So what's next? We're getting the reviewing enhancement ready to show. If anyone wants to come check it out, we'll be showing them off at the ALA annual conference. In the meantime, you can pat our backs at Book Expo America.

Thanks to deovolenti for the image.

Two LibraryThing podcasts

John Houser of PALINET interviewed me for the PALINET Podcast (iTunes). It ended up syndicated as two short podcasts. I think they're some of the best short introductions to LibraryThing for librarians and of our project, LibraryThing for Libraries.

• Part one. "In Part 1 of our conversation, we talked about LibraryThing generally and what you can do with it."
• Part two. "In Part 2 of our conversation, we talked about LibraryThing for Libraries, achieving a critical mass of tags, and improving discovery in the library catalog."

PALINET's podcasts are my newest discovery--that and Uncontrolled Vocabulary. Recent shows include The WorldCat API and an interview with Joshua Ferraro of LibLime.

LibraryThing for Libraries, at CIL, with a new feature!

LibraryThing will be at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, D.C. next week. We're showing off LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) as exhibitors, demoing the enhancements available to libraries to make their online systems more Web 2.0., with a brand new feature.

If you're in the DC area, and are interested in coming and seeing how LTFL works within OPACs, or witnessing our rhinosaursi upgrade (now with 100% more roars!), you're in luck. We have free exhibit tickets, which gets you in to the exhibit hall (but not the conference sessions). Email me if you'd like to attend: sonya@librarything.com.

Computers in Libraries conference
Monday, April 7 - Wednesday April 9, 2008
Hyatt Regency Crystal City
2799 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA

LibraryThing at PLA

Greetings from sunny Minneapolis!

The LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) contingent will be at the Public Libraries Association conference this week, holding court in the exhibit hall. Our booth number is #1652, which you should definitely visit if you're going to be at this fine affair.

We're there to spread the word: recommended reads CAN be in your OPAC. Your patrons SHALL experience the exquisite joy that is tag browsing. You WILL be amazed how easy it is to implement.

We'll be showing off our amazing OPAC enhancement tool, featuring libraries who have implemented LTFL. You can witness firsthand how seamless the enhancements look in WebPac Pro, HIP and others.

You'll know our booth by the giant rhinos.

LibraryThing for Libraries adds statistics

LibraryThing for Libraries now has stats! Libraries in the program can see just where LibraryThing for Libraries is working for them, and where it's not. You can evaluate changes, and justify it to your bosses.

To see your statistics, go to the Stats tab. Statistics include:

• Real-world coverage numbers and percentages for each enhancement
  
• Recommendation and similar books link-usage
  
• Tag popup and search usage
  

The tab itself is basic, but we included a link to download your statistics in CSV/Excel format. Pie charts? Go crazy.

Of course, statistics are a two-edged sword for us. Although overall rates are good, some libraries aren't getting the best results. In general, if you're hiding your enhancements behind a tab, you can expect much lower rates.

We certainly suspect that LibraryThing enhancements are getting a lot more play than some other browse links—like LCSH subjects—or those of our competitors', who put their enhancements on external pages. Indeed, we're wondering if libraries would like to use LTFL's stats structure to track other links too?

LibraryThing for Libraries Email List. We've set up a Google Group for LibraryThing for Libraries customers. We hope member libraries will join up. We've sent out invites to all the primary contacts.

Sign up to have your voice heard. We will be talking about the future of LTFL and where it should go.

Job: LibraryThing for Libraries

LibraryThing is looking for someone to take over the non-coding parts of LibraryThing for Libraries, our innovative plan to bring Library 2.0 gold to OPAC 1.0 slag.

The position is part basic tech and part "sales." If you come from tech you have to prove you're personable. If you come from sales you have to prove you're very sorry about it.

Qualities:

• Smart. We value brains over experience.
• Personable. We're a bunch of trogledytes. Outshine us.
• Hard-working. LibraryThing is a startup, so hard work is expected. And you have to want that. This is the job you think about in the shower.
• Organized. We have a few hundred libraries interested in LibraryThing for Libraries already. You've got to be able to keep them straight and not get behind on emails.
• Techy. This isn't an engineer position, but you need to be comfortable with this world. HTML and CSS strongly preferred. Experience with one or more OPAC/ILS systems preferred.
• Fast learner. Don't know anything about XML? Spend today with this book.
• Library-ish. We're 3-4 library people now (with 2 MLSs). Even us out.

Location: Portland, ME or Boston, MA preferred, but we'll entertain all possibilites. Relocation not necessary, but might help.

Money: Salary, commissions, excellent plated health insurance. LibraryThing for Libraries is growing very rapidly. It's got the potential to change the world. You could be at the center of that. And you get paid?

Contact: Tim Spalding (tim@librarything.com)

Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web

"Walk into the public library in Danbury, Connecticut, and you'll find the usual shelves stacked with books, organized into neat rows. Works of fiction are grouped alphabetically by the author's last name. Nonfiction titles are placed into their propper Dewey Decimal categories just like they are at tens of thousands of other libraries in North America.

But visit the Danbury Library's online catalog, and you'll find something rather unlike a typical library.

"A search for The Catcher in the Rye bring sup not just a call number but also a list of related books and tags—keywords such as "adolescence," "angst," "coming of age," and "New York"—that describe J. D. Salinger's classic novel ... Click the tag "angst," and you'll find a list of angsty titles such as The Bell Jar, The Stranger, and The Virgin Suicides."

So begins Gene Smith's newly released book Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web (New Riders). That's right. The first book dedicated to tagging begins with LibraryThing—specifically our LibraryThing for Libraries project!

Library 2.0 people pause a second. How about that: a book about new developments in social media starts by talking about new things going on in a library? Not a social networking site, not a photo sharing site. A dream come true.

That's all I have to say for now. I knew the book was coming; Gene interviewed me for it (selections on page 134). But I haven't finished it yet.

My first impression is that it's rich and detailed, covering everything from what tagging is and why it matters, to how to implement it at the level of user interface and even technically. But But, as is my wont, I'm already scribbling little objections and expansions in the margins. That's the sign of a good book, right?

I've created a discussion group on Talk for people reading the book. Come join me to talk about it.

Crazy ideas for LibraryThing for Libraries

One big question around LibraryThing these days is "Where do we take LibraryThing for Libraries?" There is an obvious answer--direct user participation. Right now, LibraryThing for Libraries provides services that "arise from" user generated data without bringing that sort of interaction to the OPAC. So we provide tag-based searching based on LibraryThing's almost 30 million tags, but patrons can't tag books in their catalog. Nor can patrons assemble book lists, write reviews and so forth.

We're clearly going this direction. We're not sure that patron tagging is a big deal, but there are things to do here. And that's all I'll say about that!

But what else can we do? We have interesting data, an interesting technology, Casey Durfee, and the will to act on small, interesting ideas quickly. Direct us!

So here are four ideas I've been having. I wonder what the people—and particularly the 37 LTFL libraries—think of them:

Idea 1: Widgets. We could give libraries an easy way to let their patrons create library widgets for their blogs and Facebook pages. These would be little "what I'm reading" widgets--covers and titles--not unlike the popular LibraryThing widgets--but they would integrated with the library catalog. Clicking on a book would take you to the catalog, of course. The library could also add a "Add to my widget" buttons to their catalog pages.

I think widgets are a great missed opportunity for libraries. Although RSS is supposedly "Web 2.0," there's something backwards about libraryland's embrace of this static, pushy technology. Although the vendors have all rushed to implement it, not that many people really want to turn an OPAC search into an RSS feed and insert a catalog search into their otherwise human and enjoyable feed reader. (And feed readers are still a cool fringe activity--a step above drinking absinth.) But people love to show off and tell their friends what they're doing. As the saying goes, patrons don't want "your" content, their want "their" content. Widgets would be perfect there, and the data and hooks LTFL has puts us in an excellent position to do this.

Idea 2: Super-simple catalog API. We could provide an extremely simple API to individual LTFL library catalogs--just checking whether a library has a book, and maybe returning the ISBN, title, author, the direct URL and maybe related editions in the library. That's basically all we know, but it's 95% of what API developers want and 900-times easier than trying to figure out Z39.50 and MARC.

I'm not sure libraries would do anything with this, but I think some patrons would. Lightweight, fast APIs are red meat to mashups. Also, it's only a day or two of coding. I like projects like that.

Idea 3: Library Bookmarklets. Along similar lines, we could provide bookmarklets and Greasemonkey scripts that would help patrons link their library in with the rest of their online book experience. So, for example, a patron is on an Amazon page thinking about buying a book. They click their library bookmarklet and up pops a little box that says their library has the book, and links to the page.

Idea 4: Put libraries in LibraryThing itself. Right now, LibraryThing tells you if a book is available in a small number of independent bookstores and seven or eight swap sites. But it doesn't tell you if a library has it. For most libraries, we can't know. But we do know for LTFL libraries.

Five ideas is enough for now, I think.

As mentioned before, Abby and I are at ALA, boothless and fancy free.

tim@librarything.com
abby@librarything.com
Tim's cell: 207 272-0553

PS: I left on—multiple tag searching and library tag clouds. We don't need your feedback on those; we already think they're good ideas.

LTFL at 33 34 36 / Abby and Tim at ALA

Casey has just updated our list of LibraryThing for Libraries customers. We've hit 33 libraries, which is wonderful. (See the full list.) With no sales force and only half a developer, that's fantastic. LTFL is clearly starting to matter in the library world. We will be adding resources to it accordingly, and look forward to finding out more about what current and potential libraries want from it.

Not coincidentally, Abby and I are going to ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia. We didn't buy a booth; they've expensive and tie you down a lot. Instead, we'll be going to as many talks as we can, meeting with people and describing cheesesteaks as a "business expense." If you're at ALA and want to chat in passing or over a beer, let us know.

Contact details:
tim@librarything
abigail@librarything.com
cell: 207 272-0553 (note area code 207, not 208, as first posted!)

UPDATE: Thirty-FOUR. As Casey whooped: "I totally outsold Jesus" (source). Then Casey dropped dead.
UPDATE 2: Thirty six. Holy smokes.

MARCThing: A simple, self-contained MARC and Z39.50 application

Over the past couple of weeks, LibraryThing has been rolling out major improvements to our cataloging system—a new system for retrieving and parsing book information we're calling "MARCThing."

MARCThing is a major advance for LibraryThing. We've sunk months of development time into it, but we're not going to keep it to ourselves. We will be releasing all the code for non-commercial use in libraries and elsewhere.

When the dust settles, LibraryThing members will be able to draw on nearly 700 data sources worldwide, with greatly improved foreign character support and better data manipulation behind the scenes. With MARCThing underneath we will be able to introduce many new features and to reach a truly global audience. But we are confident that developers outside of LibraryThing will find many other, equally compelling uses for MARCThing, and make useful changes and extensions.

What it is. When I was given the task of improving LibraryThing's cataloging system and other involving library data, I immediately thought of Solr, one of the most influential pieces of software to come out in the past couple of years. The big idea behind Solr is that it provides a "magic box"—an easy, self-contained interface to some very powerful but complex technology, the Lucene search engine. Solr hides the messy details of Lucene from the developer and provides all sorts of extra goodies in a self-contained package. The net result is you can instantly stick an extremely powerful search engine into your project with almost no work. This combination of power and ease-of-use has quickly made it a developer favorite, and spawned all sorts of interesting projects that never would've come out without Solr.

I wanted my own magic box that would handle the two main protocols used by libraries to transfer cataloging data, MARC and Z39.50, without anyone having to go into the details of how they work. And since I didn't want to have to find or build another magic box, ever, I wanted something that could be easily used from any programming language.

Writing it was pretty easy—I used Django for the web part, Pymarc for MARC, and PyZ3950 for the Z39.50 support. With a good software library, working with Z39.50 or MARC records isn't hard. The hard (or at least time-consuming) part of MARCThing was tracking down servers and dealing with oddball cases. There are many lists of Z39.50 servers out there, but the data is often incomplete, incorrect, or out of date. When you do find a Z39.50 server, oftentimes it's non-standard in some way, or only has limited functionality. So the process of connecting to libraries using Z39.50 is fraught with guesswork and manual fiddling. That's bad. The whole point of a standard should be to free you from guesswork.

How to use it. Using MARCThing is simple. Either send it some MARC records or what Z39.50 server you want to search and what you want to search on, and get back XML (or a variety of other formats) that you can use in applications without having to know a lick about library cataloging. All the messy details (and there are a lot of them) are hidden from view. Everything just works. You don't need to know what a nonfiling indicator or a use attribute is, or the difference between MARC8 and UTF-8. You just need to know how to make an HTTP request.

What I hope is that this inspires allows people not in the library world to do cool things with library data. It's sad that working with library data is such a hassle -- there are so many underused resources out there. I won't go too much into the technical problems with Z39.50 and MARC, but I do have a recommendation for anybody involved in implementing a standard or protocol in the library world. Go down to your local bookstore and grab 3 random people browsing the programming books. If you can't explain the basic idea in 10 minutes, or they can't sit down and write some basic code to use it in an hour or two, you've failed. It doesn't matter how perfect it is on paper -- it's not going to get used by anybody outside the library world, and even in the library world, it will only be implemented poorly.

Open source plans. LibraryThing was already the only major cataloging site that used any library data. (The rest use Amazon's data exclusively, a severe hurdle to book lovers in the US and an absolute barrier to those in most other countries.) It took us a long time to develop, and we have limited resources. We are not eager to give our competitors such a valuable tool -- they can get their own library geeks. At the same time, we are eager to encourage non-profit use and to license its non-competing commercial use for a token amount.

We're thinking of releasing the code under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, but it will depend on what people want to do with it. If you were bitten by a radioactive librarian and suddenly gained the power to search 700 libraries worldwide, what would you do?

Stay tuned; code is coming soon!

LibraryThing for Libraries: October

October was another good month for LibraryThing for Libraries, with 7 new libraries coming on board.

First up on the list is the Los Gatos Public Library in California. Although a very small library, they show yet again that you don't need to be big to innovate. They've promoted LibraryThing for Libraries extensively on their blog; they've even made a cool little video on YouTube of the widgets in action.

Library number two is the East Brunswick Public Library in New Jersey. Much more than most libraries, EBPL has really positioned themselves as a part of their community. You can see this in their offering of notary and passport renewal services at their libraries and their involvement with the community TV station, EBTV. I like seeing libraries that try to integrate themselves into their patrons' daily lives like that. For an LTFL action shot, here's "Treasure Island" in their catalog.

Next up is the Institute of Technology Tallaght, Dublin, our second library in Ireland. Along with our first one, the Waterford Institute of Technology, they're a part of our nefarious plan to get every Irish engineering major hooked on LibraryThing.

Number four is the Kingston Information and Library Service in Melbourne, Australia. They have the honor of being our first Australian library, but we've got a bunch more on the way, starting with number five, the Australian Tax Office. The ATO's running LibraryThing for Libraries on their intranet only, so I don't have a demo URL for them. I'd like to thank them for coming up with a righteous javascript hack to make our widgets work with SirsiDynix's new EPS/Rooms system.

Arlington Heights Memorial Library in Illinois is next up. I've already had a couple of other prospective customers ask to have their installation "look like Arlington Heights." You can see why -- they've done a great job blending LibraryThing for Libraries into their III catalog.

Finally, GMILCS is a consortium of academic and public libraries in New Hampshire. GMILCS runs SirsiDynix's Horizon Information Portal catalog. It's been cool to work with so many of the same people I knew when I used to support Horizon Information Portal for Dynix. Tim will be giving a talk about LibraryThing for Libraries at the CODI, the annual SirsiDynix user conference tomorrow along with Colleen Medling of the Salt Lake County Public Library. It should be a good one, so if you're at CODI, check it out.

Along with picking up pencils, spatulas, and other stuff with vendor names on them, and talking to a lot of people in denim shirts, annual user conferences are always a good place to learn about new ways to make the software you're stuck with do new things. That's really valuable when change happens so slowly in the library software world; I remember helping GMILCS out when they first brought up their current catalog back in 2002. 5 years is a lifetime on the internet, and the gap between the speed that enterprise library software moves and the speed the web moves only seems to be getting bigger and bigger. So it's vital for software vendors to make catalogs that can be modified, extended and customized both internally and externally. Customers shouldn't have to wait for years for the shiny next generation product to get new features. It's not just up to the vendors, though; customers need to keep finding ways to improve their out of the box systems (like David Pattern's interesting new HIPPie project), library managers need to create a culture where change is embraced, and services like LibraryThing for Libraries need to keep adding more new functionality to existing systems. Legacy library software is inescapable -- major upgrades will always be a gigantic chore, and even minor changes to the core of the system will often have huge repercussions on dozens of staff and thousands of patrons. That should not keep libraries from constantly making improvements to their public interfaces.

LibraryThing for Libraries: Richland County, Cal State - Channel Islands and San Francisco State University

Richland County Public Library

San Francisco State University (source)

Cal State University - Channel Islands (source)

LibraryThing for Libraries just passed another milestone: we now have too many customers to keep track of in short-term memory.

Our first new library is the Richland County Public Library. We're really excited to have them on board, since they're the biggest public library we've worked with so far—at nearly three million checkouts a year. They're doing a lot of simple yet innovative things, like offering reference via instant messaging and having a kid-friendly website. Of course, they have a blog too. I have a soft spot for large public libraries, having worked in one for several years and having lived in big cities with great library systems (Denver, Salt Lake City and Seattle) for most of my life. We hope to be adding many more large public libraries in the coming months.

Our second library is the San Francisco State University library. With around 30,000 students and four million items owned by their library, they're a big one too. They've got one of the best- looking and easy-to-use library websites I've seen (and I look at a lot of them - occupational hazard). Their electronic resources librarian did an excellent presentation on LibraryThing for Libraries a few weeks back.

Our third library is Cal State University - Channel Islands, located in the beautiful area between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. They're our first Voyager customer, and we'd like to thank them for helping us work out how to make Voyager work with our widgets. They've also volunteered to be our latest data source for book searching.

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Photo credits: (1) Courtesy Richland County Public Library. (2) CSUCI bell tower by Flickr:AIBakker (CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0). (3) Library by Flickr:relic (CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0)

Evilness -- Opposition -- Policy and Procedure

Someone recently called LibraryThing for Libraries out over our terms and privacy policy. Guess what? They were right to do it!

The policy was vague. It didn't describe what we actually use library data for and how we use it. It gave us potential room to do bad things.

Well, we don't want the room. We've always treated our user and library data carefully, and we always will. So we've written it again, this time as a straight-jacket.

You can read the full text here, but the Cliff's Notes version is this:

• We don't collect any data from or about library patrons;
• We only use a library's data to enrich their own catalog
• We're not allowed to change the policy suddenly

If anyone feels we've left anything out, let us know.

LibraryThing for Libraries: Randolph County, Bowdoin and Clarement Colleges

Bowdoin College (source)

The Libraries of Claremont Colleges (Honnold/Mudd Library) (source)

Randolph County Public Library, Asheboro Public Library (source)

We just added three new and very different members to LibraryThing for Libraries—a public library system in North Carolina, a liberal arts college in Maine, and a collegiate consortium in California.

The first is the Randolph County Public Library, a system of seven libraries in the Asheboro, North Carolina area. On their blog, the library has described LibraryThing for Libraries as "stunning" and a "quantum leap." We couldn't agree more.

Randolph County is also our first public demonstration of LibraryThing for Libraries within what is probably the most widely-used online catalog, the Horizon Information Portal (HIP) from SirsiDynix. Up until now, our live libraries have all used WebPac and WebPac Pro from Innovative Interfaces. As we promised, LibraryThing for Libraries works with any library OPAC, and just great with HIP.

Check out Randolph County Public Library searches for regency fiction or the novel Eragon.

The second is Bowdoin College, located in Brunswick, Maine, just up the road from LibraryThing's global HQ in Portland. Bowdoin is a small liberal arts college with about 1,700 students. For a small library, they are doing a lot of innovative things and have a good-looking, easy-to-use website. They've put in a neat little JavaScript tooltip to explain what tags are that we just might have to steal. Check out LTFL in action here and here.

Libraries of the Claremont Colleges serves Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and several other colleges I couldn't get into. They're our largest collection to date, with LibraryThing providing data on over 173,000 of their titles! Reflecting the diversity of the colleges they serve, they have a wide collection of materials, from combinatorics to gender studies. The alternate editions widget is proving especially useful for academic libraries, as can be seen for this translation of the poetry of Catullus.

It's extremely gratifying to watch how quickly LibraryThing's data keeps growing. LibraryThing for Libraries was originally envisioned as a product for public libraries, but LibraryThing's continued growth is making that distinction seem less relevant. We're now up to three academic libraries, with several more in the pipeline, and we've even started working with a couple of corporate/special libraries.

In the three months since our first library started using LibraryThing for Libraries, we've gone from 17 million tags and 13 million items to 23 million tags and 18 million items. Every item and tag added to LibraryThing improves the reach and power of LTFL. It's really cool to be involved with a product that gets better and more powerful every minute of the day.

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Photo credits: (1) Bowdoin College photo by Flickr:cybertaur1 (CC Attribution). (2) Honnold Mudd Library by Jarod Hightower-Mills (Public Domain). (3) Asheboro Public Library photo by Flickr: Asheboro Public Library (CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0)

LibraryThing for Libraries: Waterford and Deschutes

Two more libraries have added LibraryThing for Libraries:

Waterford Institute of Technology (catalog) in Waterford in south east Ireland. WIT becomes our first academic library, and our first one outside the US. Apart from that, we were particularly happy to get the ball up and rolling. WIT's David Kane and I have been corresponding for some time, and quite profitably. Long before LibraryThing for Libraries, he tried to bolt our recommendations onto the WIT catalog. His solution—functional but requred real-time scraping of the WIT catalog—threw the technical challenges of LibraryThing for Libraries in high relief. David was also intrumental in setting up my keynote at the Irish Innovative Users Group. David's current passion is the WIT Institutional Repository, about which he gave a talk at the IIUG.

It's good to see LibraryThing for Libraries operating in a different context. While something like romance comes up fairly light at WIT, their holdings in tags like engineering and programming dazzle, and really give our suggestion algorithms a work-out!

Deschutes Public Library of Deschutes County in Oregon. Our largest library so far! Deschutes has five branches serving 140,000 patrons, in the fastest growing area of Oregon. They have quite a broad collection, but my eye was drawn to Why cats paint : a theory of feline aesthetics, which suggests mostly cat books, of course.

Bedford Public Library adds LibraryThing for Libraries

The Bedford Public Library in Bedford, TX (town, Wikipedia) has become the second library to put LibraryThing for Libraries in their online catalog.

Trying out LTFL fits with Bedford's Public Libraries forward-looking stance, with free wifi, integration with Library ELF and other initiatives.

You can see LibraryThing for Libraries at work with books like:

• Divine secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood : a novel / Rebecca Wells.
• Gone with the wind / Margaret Mitchell

Both show our "semi-FRBR" edition-combination at work—cross-linking to large-print and audio editons—and our "similar books" algorithm, for finding other books you might want to read.

We are now also able to link to tag pages:

• Cyberpunk
• Cozy mysteries (my favorite newly-discovered genre)
• Ice Age (as opposed to the LCSH term "Glacial Epoch")
• Creative Writing (the LCSH is "authorship")

Of course, tags aren't the "answer," but just another way to find things, with different strengths. If tags bring Bedford's genre fiction holdings into high relief, it doesn't do as good a job with Texas history as their LCSH headings.

Some technical details. Bedford Public Library is another Innovative Interfaces Web OPAC catalog, like the first, the Danbury Public Library. Our third library will be one too. So it bears reminding that LibraryThing for Libraries works with any OPAC, and no better with Innovative's. We think it's spreading through them because people like to have a tangible example. That or it's the library equivalent of the Brazilian Internet Phenomenon.

Even though it was the same OPAC we took the time to make the CSS fit in perfectly with Bedford's design--a very different green-based one. Our chief LTFL engineer, Altay, is becoming quite a faker!