Happy Birthday LibraryThing!

Twenty years ago, LibraryThing went live, and my life changed forever. I think we changed a few of your lives too.

In honor of this, we're going to have some fun:

• You've probably noticed the "20 Years" banner at the top of the site. It may go a less-striking red later, but it will be up a while. 20 years is an aeon in internet time!
• Our home page and footer has changed to celebrate our longevity.
• We've got snazzy new 20-year t-shirts https://www.librarything.com/topic/373406
• We have a 20-question "LibraryThing 20th Birthday Treasure Hunt" https://www.librarything.com/hunt/38
• We have a "Books We Discovered On LibraryThing" list https://www.librarything.com/list/46902/all/Books-We-Discovered-On-LibraryThing
• We released TriviaThing "Question of the Day" https://www.librarything.com/topic/373349
• We released four new "Collector" fields https://www.librarything.com/topic/373413

There's more to come. The "State of the Thing" going out today has a short account of LibraryThing's founding. And we have several major features in the wings—read the State of the Thing for more info.

There's much more to say, and if I weren't so exhausted, I'd say it. If it weren't Friday afternoon, you'd hear from other staff too, many of whom have been with us for years and all of whom have been working hard on our birthday celebrations. For now, however, I must say thank you to everyone who has made LibraryThing what it is. Social software is only half software. Software is just the skeleton. The people make it what it is. And you've made LibraryThing a uniquely nerdy, passionate and friendly place. I owe you all a debt of gratitude.

Happy Birthday LibraryThing!

And yes, you’ve definitely changed some of our lives, at least mine. I love being on here and it’s one of few places online that I can say has only been a force for good in my life.

And I love that you spelled it “aeon”.

Happy Birthday, LT and thank you for everything you have given us.

Happy BDay and many, many more to come!

My favorite place on the whole wide web

Appropriately, it’s a holiday weekend. Enjoy!

It's incredible to think I've been using a website for fun for almost 2 decades (i signed up in Jan 2007, so LT was a toddler at the time).

Cataloguing my books on LT and helping with combining and CK actually gave me the experience and confidence to go for my first full-time, professional job, working with the front-end of a donor database, about ten years ago now.

For a long while I was less active because that job and the subsequent ones took so much of my time and energy, but I have never stopped telling people how great LT is for book discovery, in part thanks to the tag system.

Happy 20th! Thanks for creating one of my very favorite hobbies all these years! 🎉

LT is my favorite "place" on the 'net.

Happy birthday, LT! Has it been twenty years already? Here's to at least twenty more! Tonight I'll raise a glass to the website that made me want to join so badly that I had to sign up for a credit card.

LT is one of my favourite websites. I rarely sign out any more.

Happy birthday to LibraryThing, my favorite place on the internet.

Happy birthday! Even aside from the books, I've made so many real-life friends here. What a nice place to be.

Happy birthday to my favorite website!

I hope the "Est. 2005" logo sticks around; I think the splash of color at the bottom of the page looks snazzy!

I just realized, after all our efforts, we didn't include a link to this conversation in the State of the Thing. Ugh. :(

>12 timspalding: Would you want one on the yellow 20 years logo in the top bar? (I'm saying it as if I'm offering, Lol.) Could help people get to here.

>13 Nevov:

Yeah. I made a News post about it. I think I'll add a general banner, with links to various things. Not tonight.

Congratulations & Happy Birthday! You've made it easier for me to keep track of what books I have, and your recommendations are helpful!

>10 norabelle414: *Waves to Nora*

Yep. The friendships I’ve made on LT over 20 years is what makes it so special to me. It has been an all-consuming hobby for me as it fits so well together with my other two book obsessions, BookCrossing and Little Free Library.

Happy 20th, Tim and LT.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

I joined in December 2006, and entered my first books in March 2007 (after Neil Gaiman reminded me I'd signed up for this place). I then successfully cataloged all my books, for the first time ever (having tried with various apps, spreadsheets, and notebooks); LT was and is a lifesaver, as well as my primary social site. Happy birthday and many thanks!

I just finished reading the SOTT and ooooh the teasers for the next big features to come/get updated this month are going to make a lot of people very happy!

Happy birthday, LT! 🎉🎂🎈

Apparently I have been on LT for almost 19 years. That is...quite shocking.

So, so many congratulations to the team on twenty years!!

I found LT in January 2006 after reading this CSM article (which I'm fairly astonished is still online!) and there have probably only been a literal handful of days since then that I haven't used it at least once. It has been, and remains, the best site on the Internet, and long may it reign.

Cheers, cheers, cheers, to twenty years!

And huzzah and huzzah and huzzah to everyone who has made LT what it is!

(And now that I've found Tim's final fiendish clue in the treasure hunt, I have some books to catalog, so I'd better go do that!)

Mabrook and Happy XX^th Birthday LT!! Thank you >1 timspalding: AND your Team for making this work!



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Here's another Happy Birthday wish, LT!

I joined in 2006 when looking for a place (offsite from my home) to list my books for insurance purposes in case of disaster. I figured no insurance company was going to believe I had so many books unless I had them documented. ;-)

I stayed for the community. Who knew that LT was going to become so much more than just a place to catalogue one's books!

Here's to many more years of literary fun!

>1 timspalding: Happy birthday to Library Thing!

I don't know what a Collector field is but I can't find out as the link goes to the Qotd article. Please fix the link so I can satisfy my curiosity?

>23 elorin: Try this: https://www.librarything.com/topic/373413

For those of you who don't subscribe to State of the Thing—what are you waiting for, you can sign up HERE?!—you can read this month's issue online, including Tim's history of the founding of the site. August SOTT.

Happy Birthday! I have been on this site for 171/2 years of that 20. Thank you for a great site and facilitating a fantastic community!

>18 keristars: I just finished reading the SOTT and ooooh the teasers for the next big features to come/get updated this month are going to make a lot of people very happy!

Heh. Which ones? I think power-members will appreciate the edit tracking a lot. We are already appreciating it, because it make it easier to debug. (If a user says "Why did this happen to my catalog?" we can say "Because you changed this, this and this at 3:22pm yesterday.") The import is far better, but so far we only have the Goodreads import redone. The others are similar, but will require more work. I also have great hopes for the app. There are several other projects in the pipeline too. We've been hoarding. More would have come out, but August is heavy on vacations, and on dropping kids off at college.

>24 seeword: Thank you!

>27 timspalding: haha, all of them! I didn't want to spoil anyone's fun if they were looking forward to reading about them in the SOTT.

Happy bday LT :)

Happy, happy, happy Birthday LibraryThing! Hands-down, my favorite website of all time. And totally stoked about the new collector fields!

Happy 20th Birthday LT!

Happy Birthday, LT! (And hey, your birthday is a day before mine!) I entered my first book in October 2005. Thank you for two decades of fabulousness and wishing you many more!

In August of 2006 (Aug 30, exactly 19 years ago, as I write this), following a particularly distressing year, I found myself sitting alone at a computer at my dining room table. That was when I discovered Librarything. With some new-found spare time on my hands, I dove in, cataloging the first 20 or so books from my shelves. Then some sort of hook set in me. I obtained a cue-cat and obsessively scanned every scannable book I had at the time, and manually entered the rest. I truly was on a journey without maps at the time (one of the first books I scanned that day also), but Librarything brought a certain measure of order and direction into my world when it was needed most. I have dutifully entered every book that has entered my personal library since then. Aside from being a biblio record of how my reading interests (even my worldview) have changed over the last two decades, I have found that as my recollection has dwindled with age, I have the Librarything app to remind me of what I have. My cognitive functions have been affected the last couple years, and Librarything has been my helper. You helped find me a map.

Happy 20th Birthday to Librarything, to Tim, to Abigail, and to the others who, over the years, have applied their time, effort, and skill to make this my favorite watering hole on the internet. I'm sure your journey has had some detours like mine, but here we are at the other end, maps in hand. May the next 20 continue to be a Great Thing.

Happy belated Birthday! And just like that: LibraryThing is 20. 🥳 Milestone birthday! Even though I joined some time ago, I am just figuring things out. May LT be around for many years to come. 🥂 Looking forward to my time here❣️Thank you for creating this space all those years ago and giving bookish people (from all over the world) a place to come together. 🙂📚 Cool idea with the birthday treasure hunt btw. 👍

Happy birthday!

I've "only" been here since early 2009, but it's scary to think that's about sixteen-and-half years already.

>35 Eva_Isabella: Totally agree. Kinda feels like it was yesterday. 😳🫣😜

Words cannot describe how much I’ve enjoyed the more than seventeen years I’ve been on LibraryThing. Thank you, Tim. And Happy Birthday!

>1 timspalding: Happy Birthday LibraryThing! It has certainly changed my life. I used to keep track of my reading in journals, but I had no record - or library - of my books. I love it!

Congrats on 20 years! I joined November 2005 (under a different user name), and I'm glad that even with all the improvements the core of the site and its culture have stayed true. Fads come and go, but the classics never go out of style. Like the cat on my lap purring away, some things are just warm and cozy. Here's to 20 more!

Happy birthday, LT! It's been quite the ride.

Happy Birthday LibraryThing!

And thank you. I've just celebrated my 17th Thingaversary (books coming in as we speak - just need more shelves now).

>1 timspalding: Aww Tim *blush*. Thank you.

Muchísimas felicidades y gracias por todo. Mi encuentro con LT fue a raíz del fallecimiento de mi hermana. Ella me encargó, antes de fallecer, que ordenara la biblioteca que habíamos construido en la familia, entre mis padres, ella y yo. LT me está ayudando a cumplir este encargo de una manera fácil y completa ya que se trata de una gran biblioteca con mucha novela pero también poesía, algo de teatro y ensayo de muchos temas.
Gracias por convertir esta tarea en un placer que me permite reencontrarme con mi familia y con mi propia vida personal a través de los libros. Una historia de 20 años que me permite organizar una vida de 100 años.

Happy Birthday!!
I joined on Nov 13, 2007.
I really enjoy taking part in Early Reviewers. Discovered authors new to me and works that probably would never have crossed my desk if not for your programme.
Thank you for bringing a sense of wonder and peace to me in a chaotic world.
Here's to many more years to come!!

Happy Birthday LibraryThing!!!🥳🥳❤️🎂

I joined in 2009. LibraryThing has been a part of my daily life since then. I love it here.

Happy birthday! I really appreciate LibraryThing, such a treasure trove of information and lots of fun exchanges in books. Thank you!

Happy birthday LibraryThing! I joined in 2009. Forget Folger's, LT is still the best part of waking up :)

Happy birthday, LibraryThing! My 20th Thingaversary is October 3rd, and it's my favourite place on the internet! It makes my data-loving brain happy and has saved me from uncounted duplicate book purchases :)

Here's to LT's future! Long may it run!

>1 timspalding: timspalding: Happy Birthday LibraryThing, congratulations!

I find LibraryThing a wonderfull medium to work with : I have entered over 7500 books from the Heritage Library's Esperanto collection (Antwerp, Belgium).

Yet I am disappointed that the planned language Esperanto has still not been included in the list of languages ​​that can function fully and with equal rights in LibraryThing.

Happy birthday LibraryThing!

I have been here for less than two years, I was looking around to see if I liked it better than Goodreads, saw a question I could answer in Name That Book and got myself an account right away (sadly the person who asked the question never returned).
I know only a small part of LT, but I love it, especially that it gives me recommendations I am actually interested in instead of circling around the same set of currently popular authors.

Here's to the next twenty years!

Congrats on 20 years! I am so glad I found this site back in 2008.

I really appreciate the service and tools you provide and the incredible dedication of your staff. Thanks very much for so much happiness!

Happy (belated) birthday to LibraryThing, and everyone involved in it.

Just curious as to how long the gestation period was - from conception to it breathing on its own.

Perhaps, in five or six years, there'll be a book about Tim and the creation of LibraryThing? I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

I'm newer to LT and I'm so happy I found this site and the app!

Happy Birthday, LibraryThing!

Happy birthday to LT! I have "only" been here 12-1/2 years. To be honest, I joined shelfari (RIP shelfari) first, but moved over here, in addition, a few years before it shut down. This is my favourite book social media site!

Happy 20th birthday to LibraryThing, with a ✨banner✨, yay! I’m a newbie of being here only 15 and a half years. Many thanks for giving me an opportunity to expand my world. A lovely site I am NOT going to ditch for any reason.

A very Happy 20th Birthday to LibraryThing and congratulations to everyone who has made this happen - Tim, the team, and all of the readers and users who have been part of the community for the last 20 years.

I joined LibraryThing in April 2006, and in my first month I added 423 books (mostly history books). I’ve now catalogued 2681 books (1259 of which are tagged ‘history’), so my tastes have broadened!

Thank you LibraryThing, for everything. You are a key tool in enabling my obsession!

Happy 20th Birthday, LT!

The link for the new "Collector" fields topic seems to be the same as for "Question of the Day".

>58 idiosyncratic: https://www.librarything.com/topic/373413

I joined in March 2007 so I guess I've been around almost 18.5 years.

Happy Birthday LibraryThing!

I joined in January 2006 but for my first eight years used it only for my CD collection. I didn't add books until 2014. I recently disposed of the CDs so now it's books only.

>43 Treshojitas: Esta es una gran historia! En inglés se dice que Dios nunca cierra una puerta sin abrir una ventana. La muerte de tu hermana de deberá haber afectado mucho, pero me alegro que rescataste algo bueno de esa situación. Te mando un abrazo fuerte.

Happy birthday to the site that is the most fun you can have on a computer :)

Cheers

Happy birthday,

I joined in March 2007, purchased a lifetime membership, from memory, because I was just so impressed :)
I cant imagine life without LibraryThing :)

Happy birthday LibraryThing! Congratulations on 20 years!!!

Member since 2007 and have watched it grow and evolve over time. It has provided countless hours of enjoyment.

Made a few contributions since joining, like providing some of the default cover images, lots of combining, reviews and additions to common knowledge, added a few author images and even created a group. Greatest honor was having an image of a pile of my books used on the welcome/login page.

Thank you, Tim, Abigail and all the others whose work and contributions made LT such a wonderful site and a success. It is one my favorite places on the internet.

Happy Birthday LibraryThing! I cannot believe I have been here since 2008! You have been such a resource and a comfort when I am looking for books and honest reviews — in addition to helping me not to buy a book a second time because I forgot I already own it.

Happy Birthday, Library Thing!

I joined in Nov 2010, so almost 15 years. I was on Shelfari first, then GoodReads as my backup. As Shelfari started experiencing problems I decided to find a third option for cataloguing / recording my books and reviews, and found Library Thing. So glad I did!

Happy Birthday, LibraryThing!!! 🥳🥳 Feliz cumpleaños!!

i've joined recently this great website to catalogue and manage my library and I'm so glad I did :) So far the experience has been great and the only downside I`ve found is the lack of spanish community, which is not your fault and was not my main goal when I started my trip with you anyway. I hope that this changes over time and we can help to create a more active spanish community over here :D. But otherwise this site have fulfilled all my expectations and needs by far.

Again, happy birthday and cheers!!! For another 20 years to come! :)

Happy Birthday, LibraryThing! My 20th anniversary here comes up in about 3 weeks.

Congratulations! For not only the anniversary but also your success in cultivating a spirit of niceness and civility in an increasingly nasty internetosphere.

Happy Birthday LT!!

20 isn't enough for the list of books discovered on LT! I have 70 something marked as such and there are probably more where LT influenced my choice.

So, as you can see, I've found LT to be a wonderful tool. Thank you!

I have almost been here since the beginning. One of my favorite places on the internet! Thanks for all the fun. Keep up the good work.
Mike

I joined 6 September 2005, so, not quite 'present at the Creation', but pretty early. And I've visited the site virtually every day since then, and had enormous pleasure and satisfaction from it, though generally only a lurker on Talk. Thank you, Tim and all the team, for creating and maintaining this place!

20 years!? That’s insane!!!

I’ve been here since the beginning. I can’t believe that was 20 years ago!! Wow!!

Happy Birthday!! Joining LibraryThing might be one of the best things I did in those 20 years :-)

Love the site, love being able to catalogue my books, love getting book suggestions (as if I need even MORE books), love the critiques, love the author pages, love all the graphs and charts (my stack is higher than Notre Dame!), love the games, and love being around fellow bookworms and book dragons even if it's only virtually. BUT MOST OF ALL.....I love all the money the mobile app has saved me by allowing me to see whether or not the book I'm about to buy is already in my library....whew! ❤️ from 🇨🇦

Congratulations, happy 20th! Wanted to buy a t-shirt, but there was some technical issue. Still is this morning... and then I realised what it is. Too bad 🤦

Well, don't want to talk about politics, but if you ever setup making international shipping from outside USA (to Finland), please make big noise and I'll try again. Love t-shits and LT t-shirt would be double as lovely!

Nevertheless happy seeing LT going strong 💚

This is my 15th year here and I'm still as excited as I was on my first day. I've made friends from all over the world here. Thank you all so much for your great work!
This year alone, I've already read 38 books that were recommended to me here, thanks to the 75 Books Challenge.
All the best for the future of my favorite website!

Congratulations on an exciting website! Many happy returns.

>79 jouni: I think I've bought a couple of t-shirts and ordered international shipping (I'm never sure before it arrives at my door).
So you must have run into some kind of glitch. What happened? Didn't you get a choice between USPS versus International shipping?

>79 jouni: Let me know if I can assist with anything! I know international shipping is a bit pricey right now, but if something went wrong I'd love to help. Thank you for your compliments and congratulations!

>79 jouni: I second that! I love the new t-shirts and would generally like to buy more LT merch, but ordering things from the US right now? Sorry, no. Customs duties, extra fees ... OTOH, I have stopped ordering from the UK as well after Brexit. Most of the problem is that there is no minimum cost for what Sweden slaps customs duties and fees on, if it's from outside the EU. So if you get an agent in the EU ...

Happy Birthday Library Thing! The hard work of all the developers, staff, and community members who worked to make LT great are being celebrated today! Congratulations on reaching this huge milestone.

Happy birthday! You are the best!

Happy Birthday LT! I joined when LT was 2 years old and I am proud to have been associated with LT all these years and for sure it has been a great experience. What a great community and is a really special place on the web for me! Thanks to all who have made it possible what a legacy LT is. Upwards and onwards LT!

Happy birthday! I have been a member since 2006, so not quite from the start, but fairly early. I found out about it via LiveJournal, I think.

It has always felt like the closest thing to an actual library on the net.

>84 anglemark: Hard same! I only buy from within the EU now. (Not going to repeat the mistake I made when ordering a set of marker pens and had to pay the same for shipping as for the pens and then twice as much for customs!)

I dropped a note about this on a thread in the "Literary Snobs" group but let me reiterate:

I'm very grateful to the designers and planners and early supporters of LibraryThing.

It is the most friendly (usually) social media platform I have yet to discover, a haven for people who love good books and revere the printed word.

Happy birthday, LT!

So exciting! I joined in October 2005. IIRC it was from a recommendation from lifehacker.com. My first book added was The Shell Seekers, still a beloved book. I wrote about LT in a short-lived long gone personal blog and Tim commented on it!

Due to stages of life I feel I'm mostly using this site to track discards ("Gone But Remembered") but I'll always remain fond of my tags, all the extra info I can get about my books, and this talk community.

Happy Birthday!!! My favorite site!!

Happy Birthday.

Oh my. I joined December 2006. I have been dutifully reviewing every book I've read since that time. Over 1,000 books! I rock!. But I would have never done it without this infrastructure. I actually stopped keeping a physical 'book journal' and my musings are only ever here (spoiler-free) in my 'Reviews.' I also rely on LT recommendations and Connections for my reading suggestions. It has been and continues to be a true pleasure. And this is from someone who otherwise does ZERO social media. When I am feeling in need of distraction, or solitary enjoyment - I log on and pick my next lode of books. Thanks SO MUCH!!! Here is to another 20 years. . .

I found the first post I ever made about LibraryThing, 17th Sept 2005. https://aquila1nz.dreamwidth.org/21891.html It's not the original post, that was on livejournal, but I migrated it all over to dreamwidth at some point.

And can I say @timspalding I do appreciate that the link to my profile in it still works nearly 20 years later, no link rot, it hasn't been changed in a site redesign. It's better than most of the systems I look after at work.

Love all of this! The full crew at the LT Mothership deserve every bit of dripping praise and spotlights shining on you fine folks. It's been such a cool ride since this site of "...simple, brilliant ideas got built,...". Looking forward to celebrating this milestone and toasting you from atop my personal TBR pile, which (thanks to LibraryThing) I know to be just 11 feet shy of the St. Louis Arch, weighs 16,678 lbs. and if all the pages were laid out would stretch for 41,534 Spaldings. Brilliant. Thank you for keeping the internet fun.

I'm a very new user (joined May of this year) but this is easily one of my favorite websites. It's so easy to use, well maintained, minimally buggy, and just a joy with no AI or unwanted integrations shoved in my face. Thank you for maintaining a wonderful experience all these years! (And am looking forward to my Tshirt :D)

>1 timspalding: I joined LT on April 29th, 2006, less than a year from its foundation. I had maybe 1,200 at the time. 20 years later, my collection well over 20,000 physical volumes. Though I don't participate in the community much these days, LT has been an invaluable tool for organizing my collection over the years. Now, all these decades later, my children have grown and moved out. My husband recently retired. Within the year we will relocate from our home off 22 years in Alaska to Kalamazoo, MI. As such, I am significantly thinning my collection out. I am donating books available to rehome to our Friends of the Library group. They have graciously accepted thousands of my donations with zero limits. It's taken me over two years to trim the collection. The volume has been too much to manually remove. My alaskabookworm account has become a record of what my library once was. Once we are resettled in our new home, I will be starting a new LT account and will rescan the keepers. Thank you to LT for enabling a generation of book collecting. This remains the best cataloguing site around!!! To many more years ahead! - Linda/alaskabookworm

Happy Birthday to my favorite app and website!! Life would be so dull and unorganized without LibraryThing! Thank you for all you do and the services you provide!! 🎁🎊🎈🥳🎉🎂

>Happy Birthday library thing! I’m newer here but so far have loved using the app! Thank you for giving us this space to connect with other readers, keep track of our books, and current with all the new releases!

>98 alaskabookworm: I joined LT on April 29th, 2006

The same day that I joined!

>1 timspalding: Best place in the whole Internet!!

Tim, thank you to you and all of your team over the years. You made my life better.

>1 timspalding: happy bday librarything! I've made so many friends here and greatly enjoy creating reviews (though I don't have much time) and just chilling!

Happy birthday! I'm a little sad that I didn't find the site earlier in its life when it was more populated to meet more people. Still enjoying my stay very much. Reminds me of an older an better internet. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! **DEEP BOW OF GRATITUDE** Thank you for this place.

Happy Birthday, LibraryThing!

I joined in 2007, over eighteen years ago. I can't remember how I found it, but I came for the cataloguing and was drawn/invited in to the social side and now have close friends both in RL and online. I've never found any other site that actually listens to its members/users and it's the one I come to every day several times, usually.

Happy birthday, LibraryThing! I joined here in 2013...12 years ago! You are my favorite site to catalog my books and I love your treasure hunts...they are so fun! Tim, it was great meeting you at ALA this year and I love the tote bag you gave me...very sturdy!

Heck, I've had so much fun reading these congratulations that I figured I'd add my own. I've enjoyed LibraryThing more than I can tell you. Eighteen years and five hundred or so books later, it's always open on my browser. It's design is simple and easy to use, and as a person with many more e-books than tree books, it allows me to browse my collection in something other than greyscale. Having a place to record my opinions about the books I've read is also lovely. Here's hoping for another twenty good years.

>1 timspalding: Twenty years ago, “Librarything” was born and my life changed forever. I think that changed many of our lives.” So wrote its founder Tim Spalding. When I signed up, for a few cents – today LT is completely free – I was already a member of Goodreads. The options that the two platforms offered were partly similar, but continue to be quite different. GR is Amazon’s, LT continues to be independent, under the guidance of its founder ...

... Best wishes to Tim Spalding, to Librarything, and to all of us readers, whether paper or digital. Every human being is a book, in the great, vast library of Humanity.

angallo.medium.com

Congratulations LT 20 years - 16 years on (for me) - LT will always be my library. I could/will always count on a helping hand whenever I got/get into any kind of book trouble.
Kirsten Lund

Happy Birthday LT! I wasn't here for all the 20 years (17 is not too shabby) but I love to see how the site grew. To many more years with such good work.

Happy Birthday LT! I joined when you were just a toddler and now you've said goodbye to being a teenager. It's been a lifetime of fun.

Has it really been 20 years? I remember when myspace.com was all the rage, and if you didn't have an account on it or at least on livejournal, then you were just not with the in crowd. LOLOLOL! The book geeks won out!

I am so appreciative to Tim and all his crew who took on the refugees of Shelfari, who were adrift in the great Year of Losses, 2016. We went from our beloved Shelfari in January, to Leafmarks, where we had to learn a whole new way of cataloging our books and joining in challenges. Which were great. And then suddenly, in June, Leafmarks was shutting its site, and you welcomed us with open arms and a great deal of understanding for our plight.

The ease of use, of uploading my books, of joining Groups and their reading challenges, and even the Tag of "Read but Unowned" have been a god(dess)send for me. I am reading books that I've bought over the years (or have been gifted to me as a book lover) so that they don't sit in bags or shelves, unread and unloved, and become a burden. And if I start them or re-read them and they don't fit where I am today? Then I use the Little Free Libraries App and find a local LFL that I never new existed for their forever home.

Thank you for all the friends and the pages I've read and the adds to my Wishlist. Y'all are the best!

Happy Birthday LibraryThing! Wow, 20 years?! I became a lifetime member Nov. 4, 2005, before I added a single book, because I totally believed in supporting this thing.

And I created some Happy 1st Birthday LibraryThing photos (chocolate frosted cupcakes I baked, piled on top of some of my antique books, and a lit birthday candle), one of which got published in the School Library Journal's article about this site. Which makes me happy still. :-)

Click on my profile to see my Happy 1st Birthday LT image.

I still use LT all the time; just added some stuff today. It's one of the best things about the internet and one of the most useful sites/tools ever.

>117 Rachael: Love the birthday pic. And your little dog too!

Thank you! :-)

Ahaha I totally forgot that I'd done this, but I just found a screenshot I took from Aug. 28, 2006, of my profile home page, on the 1 year anniversary of LibraryThing!

I'd saved it because it has my image of the 1st anniversary birthday 'cake' (books and cupcakes).

If you would like to see, go to my profile and it's in my gallery of images.

I'd tag you, Tim, if I knew how... @timspalding

>120 Rachael: Add @ in front of the name

Eta: love the bday pic, but even more so the dog, ahaha

>121 SandraArdnas: @SandraArdnas thanks! I had tried to doing that but nothing happened...so maybe I still am not doing it right.

EDIT: It worked! Yay!

EDIT 2: thanks and it is really true: I have no idea what I'm doing ;-)

>120 Rachael: Oh, that is such a cute picture! And looking back on the 1st anniversary is such a nice way to celebrate the 20th! Thank you for sharing!

>123 shimmermarie: @shimmermarie Thanks so much! :-) I hadn't thought of that picture in a very long time so I enjoyed finding it on my computer and sharing it here

I think that Librarything with these changes underway will undoubtedly be more functional than Goodreads

Happy Birthday LibraryThing!! LT is by far the BEST book cataloging site out there. I’ve tried out other book cataloging places online, and nothing comes remotely close to LT. I’ve been a member since 2006, and it’s one of my favorite places online. I love that there are no ads, there are no limitations as to how many books you can catalog, how many ‘favorite’ libraries you can add, and I can go on and on. You’ve created a wonderful haven for bibliophiles! THANK YOU!!

Happy Birthday LibraryThing! May you live for evermore…

Happy Birthday LibraryThing and all the kind people living here for 20 years!!! This has been a cornerstone for authors and reviewers and deserves at least 200 badges for consistency and loyalty and zeitgeist! It has been a happy place to visit, like an old fashioned book shop and cafe together_ I love y'all

Wishing the team and the site many happy returns.

As a keen user of the groups (first 75ers and now the Category Challenge) grateful for the space provided to discuss books on our own terms without Amazon or the ads.

I'm a little late to the celebration, but Happy 20th Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday from an 18 1/2 year member. LT is the first thing I do every morning and definitely a highlight of my day. I cherish the friends I have made here -- those I have never met in RL and those I have. A huge thank-you to all who make this possible!!

>1 timspalding: Hey, happy birthday.

I've been using LibraryThing since November 2006! I'm really grateful for the service. I even paid for the "lifetime" subscription in 2010 and TinyCat back in 2019.

So congratulations and thanks for all the work.

Happy Birthday! Keep up the good work!

Happy 20th birthday. I suppose that's why there's no booze?

>1 timspalding: Happy Birthday LibraryThing!

Twenty. That’s like being an adult!

Very Happy Birthday LibraryThing! Please note: I've only been here for 16 years, so no Hard Libations for me! Also I need to get the new T-shirt. I came home one day and my partner was wearing my 'How do you LibraryThing?' shirt, and that was the end of it being 'mine'. Ah, married life....

Here's to 20 more great years!

LibraryThing has without a doubt changed many things in my life and I am proud to say it is all for the good. It is a daily ritual and usually an all day ritual. My love affair with books and the written word goes far beyond anything I could possibly ever explain. My books are my children, my friends (Yes… I do get out of the house and socialize, but that is an overrated event at best) and offer a connection to an unlimited valley of voices, ideas, etc. Before I discovered this site I was cataloguing my inventory in Excel. A daunting task to say the least. With the advent of Librarything…not only do I now have a much larger tool to view the world of books, but it enables, discussion, research and does an extremely good job of guiding readers down the paths of recommendations. And last but not least….a huge BZ to the folks who maintain the site and are always there to answer questions and provide help.

Happy birthday to LT and to all us, accomplices of this splendid madness.

Library thing has made keeping track of my books - what I own, what I have read, what I want to read etc. etc. so much easier. I can't remember where I first came across it (maybe Lifehacker?) but I joined on 5 September 2005 (so past my 20th now too!) and have never regretted it. Wishing LT many more happy returns.

I passed my year membership yesterday, but so far no medal.

>143 gwernin:
I don't think 'Twentier' (Twentyer?) medals have been designed and set up yet, only 'Fiver', 'Tenner', 'Fifteener'; Tim himself hasn't got one and his anniversary date was August.

ah. well, I hope they'll get around to it before too long!

Happy Birthday Librarything. I really enjoy taking part in Early Reviewers not only the opportunity to receive, re ad and review books but to see what others say. Also, the helpful staff.

Happy Birthday LibraryThing! And many, many thanks to Tim for the original idea and making this fantastic platform available to booklovers and owners everywhere. The statistics are mind boggling and are a wonderful statement of the importance and passion of reading. Hope to have LibraryThing forever!

Happy birthday! Twenty years ago, I was trying to figure out the best way to catalog my books and considering creating an Access database. Thank goodness I found LibraryThing before I tried. I joined in October 2005 and have never looked back. I started just by cataloging but have loved the Early Reviewer opportunities and have been part of the 75 Books a Year group for 11 years.

Wonderful community! Thanks, Tim, for this truly lovely little corner of the web.

Nice to hear this. Happy 20 Years of service in Information Management. I am in Malawi, southern Africa and i use Library thing as a Coordinator for American Corner Mzuzu. Library Thing has been so helpful in my work in cataloguing books for the corner. Thank you!

Happy Birthday LibraryThing!! We enjoy using this system from Liberia, West Africa at the Liberia International Christian College. Your library services are very helpful and easy to understand.
Thanks and Happy Birthday once more!
Moses M. Kamara

I found out about this fun site through the now defunct historicalfictiononline (a forum for historical fiction lovers) in the late 2000s.

>1 timspalding: It's been a pleasure seeing you at the exhibit halls during American Library Assoc. (ALA) Annual over the years. Thanks for all your work here!

Happy Birthday Library Thing :)

Happy birthday, Library Thing! Thanks to all the hard-working staff who keep it running, and thanks to the users who keeps things exciting!

Happy Birthday, LT! May we have another 20 years and more :D

Happy birthday . You changed my life and my library when I joined in 2011 and I encourage everyone who is book mad in South Africa to discover and join the Library thing .

Happy birthday LibraryThing. I joined in the summer of 2006, after seeing a short article in the UK newspaper The Times. As I recall, I had almost thrown the edition away and then it just caught my eye....and the rest is history.

>I just found you and I think I am going to love it here! Happy 20th and here is to many more birthdays in the future! 🎉

Relatively new member, and just wanted to say Happy Birthday!

>1 timspalding: I joined LT in its very early years, and ever since it has been my favorite place to be on the internet. It has been an invaluable resource! So a very heartfelt Happy Birthday to LibraryThing!

>158 Rajbarage: Yeah, me too, but LibraryThing is like, amazing? Who in the right mind would hate it? Anyway, happy 20th birthday!! And we're hoping for 20 more!!

>1 timspalding: Thank you, Library Thing! I've been here since about 2009 and have loved every minute. Tim and all, great job and wishing you much success in the next 20 years!

LibraryThing, happy 20th, and here's to many more! Your site is the best online for books and other media by a long shot. You support free speech, remove spam, and (Mirabile visu) keep our conversations civil --- you are one of the very few websites online to have achieved that. Thanks!

20 years ago yesterday I joined LibraryThing and I don't regret a day of it.

Happy birthday! I've been here since September 9, 2005 and am so grateful for a place to catalog my personal library. Thanks Tim!

>163 wyvernfriend:

Good to see you still here!

>164 GypsiReads:

Wow. Early!

Happy Birthday to LibraryThing. Great Staff.

happy birthday LT and thanks for everything you do!

🎉👏👏 Happy 2️⃣0️⃣th LT, books and reading is important to me, so it's good to have found another platform that does this ✨🎉🎉

Happy Birthday! I joined October 13, 2005, and am so grateful for this wonderful space on the web. Thank you!

I admit I don’t spend nearly as much time here as I thought I would twenty years ago (or likely would have if I’d actually gone to library school like I thought I would), but this remains the best $25 I ever spent online.

(And I knew I’d joined _early_ early, but I didn’t realize I nearly made it into the first month—joined just before my birthday in late September, 2005!)

Happy birthday, LT! I joined in 2012, and have been a mostly regular, lately sporadic member. But I always come back—this is a great spot in a weird internet. Here's to 20 more!

🎶 Happy Birthday LibraryThing! 🎶🥳
You’ve made a space for me I treasure, and thank everyone who makes it happen! Love & Blessings to you all! ♥️

This is so very awesome and I am so glad that I discovered this application and website. My personal library is just around 3000 volumes now and I have been wanting to properly catalog and index them for so very long but just did not want to do all the physical labor that would be involved in such a large collection. And my collection grows by an average of 200 to 400 books a year, but this app has been absolutely miraculous and I love it. Happy Birthday!!!