LibraryThing

October Early Reviewer Books

2008-10-09T15:15:00.001-04:00

The October batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 55 books this month, and a grand total 1,670 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Sunday, October 26th at 6pm EDT.

Eligiblity:

Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, France, Germany, and Israel. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

5 Spot	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Avon Books
Ballantine Books	Bantam	Beaufort Books
BelleBooks	Canon Press	Cheops Books
Classical Comics	Delta	Demos Medical Publishing
Faith Words	Frog Books	Hammersmith Press
Hunter House	IAP	Leucrota Press
Loving Healing Press	McBooks Press	McClelland & Stewart
New York Review Books	North Atlantic Books	Other Press
Pantonne Press	Picador	PS Books
Random House Canada	Raven Tree Press	Seal Books
Sourcebooks	South Dakota State Historical Society Press	Spunky Books
St. Martin's Griffin	St. Martin's Press	Summertime Publications
YMAA

LibraryThing server eaten by moose

2008-10-01T17:15:00.002-04:00

Sorry. Made you look...

Find LibraryThing a Maine employee, please!

We're gonna keep collections hostage until we get a warm body in an uncomfortable chair over here.

PC Plus Award

2008-10-01T16:01:00.003-04:00

LibraryThing apparently won the Performance Award given by PC Plus. I haven't read the article yet (it's in Issue 275 which doesn't go on sale until Oct 21st, apparently), but we're pleased nonetheless.

Actually, I don't think they put the full-text online. So if anyone in the UK cares to grab a copy and mail it to us, we'll give you a year's membership in exchange...

More Dewey

2008-09-30T10:28:00.004-04:00

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter is one of our most requested Early Reviewer books this month. Unfortunately, there were only 15 copies available—and with a few hours left now, there are a whopping 1,637 members requesting a copy to read and review. So our friends at Grand Central Publishing decided to double the number of books they're giving out, and now 30 lucky members will get a chance to read and review Dewey. Thanks to them.

To everyone who requested an Early Reviewer book in this September batch, you'll find out soon if you won one!

Design a Logo, Win Some Goodies!

2008-09-30T09:07:00.005-04:00

Another day, another contest.

We're looking for a logo to use with our new Legacy Library spin-off project, Libraries of Early America. Very ambitiously, we intend to LT-catalog all known American libraries from before c. 1825 (you'd be amazed at how many there are). We're focusing on individual and family libraries for the time being, but may look to expand that in the future.

Wanted: Basic but elegant Libraries of Early America logo design for use on LibraryThing pages, an eventual LEA portal site (to feature essays, digitized book catalogs, &c.) and elsewhere. I'll leave it open-ended from there - let your imaginations run wild!

Reward: Tim's offered up a lifetime membership to LT, an LT t-shirt, and a Cue-Cat, and we'll also send along one of Monticello's great Thomas Jefferson library mugs to the winning entrant.

How to Enter: Send your entry (as URL or image file) to me at jbdibbell at gmail dot com by, oh, let's say 15 October. I'll circulate them to other interested parties and we'll pick a winner shortly thereafter. Tim's standard fine print ("Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial") applies. Any questions or clarifications, just ask.

Find LibraryThing a Maine employee, get $1,000 in books

2008-09-29T17:41:00.003-04:00

That's right. Find us a Maine—or anyway within an hour of Portland, ME—employee and we'll give you $1,000 in books.

We did this once before. It's how we found John, our Systems Adminitrator. (John found himself, so he got his own $1,000.)

Jobs. We have three potential jobs to fill.

Hacker. We're looking for PHP hacker. JavaScript genius and library-data experience. We hope we get two of those.
Graphic designer/user-experience guru. Experience designing for data-rich sites like LibraryThing a must.
Brainy, overworked assistant. Smart, flexible, organized, relentless—willing to do both high-level (strategic analysis) and low-level (send-out-these-CueCats) work. The job is non-technical, but you need to be super-comfortable around computers.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to Abebooks, Amazon, Booksense or the independent bookseller of your choice. (Longfellow Books? Books Etc.?) You can split it between them. You don't need to buy books with it (but why do that?).

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up with a resume and etc.—or they mention your name in their email ("So-and-so told me about LibraryThing"). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it on someone's blog, we hope you'll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Contact Tim Spalding (tim@librarything.com) for more information, or to send a resume.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired full-time, not part-time, contract or for a trial period. If we don't hire someone for the job, we don't pay. The contact must happen in the next month. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving.

Needless to say, we'll throw in a free lifetime membership, so you can catalog your loot. And you'll get the satisfaction you helped LibraryThing become everything it could be.

Kudos. This blog post samples CreativeCommons Attribution-Share-Alike images from Flickr users boredcollegekid, GoCardUSA, SundayKofax, DBKing (Longfellow statue in DC, not Portland, alas), Man_Pikin and RyanInc.

Author chats...

2008-09-21T23:22:00.005-04:00

LibraryThing has a number of ways authors and publishers can get into the LibraryThing thing, including LibraryThing Authors, Early Reviewers and pimping out author pages.

We are now cranking up the volume on another way: Author Chats.

Basically, Author Chats are a special group set aside for scheduled chats with authors. Chats are scheduled and time-limited, taking one or two weeks max. An author with a new book, or who just wants to connect with some fans, can sign up for a chat without feeling obligated to keep talking on LibraryThing month after month.

Abby and I recently reviewed what we're doing with authors and publishers, and have decided to pump up Author Chats as much as we can. We're going to be adding some minor features around them, like putting notices on work pages for the author. And I've just started a basic letter for members to adapt and send to authors and their publicists. I've also started a talk thread about this, so we can figure out the best way to get the message out and, frankly, to apply some pressure to publishers to cough up the goods!

Upcoming author chats. The two author chats starting this week aren't household names, but might be worth a look.

Gene Healy. You want topical? We got topical! There's a presidential election coming up, and Gene Healy's new book is title The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power.

The book is detailed critique of growing executive power under both parties. Healy is currently a vice president* at Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, DC. Is was also--and much more importantly--a friend of mine at Georgetown. I lost touch with him after graduation, so it was a wonderful surprise to turn over a book at Book Expo America and see a familiar face!

You can check out Gene's book on LibaryThing, at Amazon (not, apparently on Booksense). Gene also has a blog.

If you want him now, or don't like reading, there's an excellent interview with Gene on C-Span's Washington Journal, posted here. There's another eloquent and very amusing C-Span appearance, in which he calls Teddy Rosevelt "one of the more ridiculous and obnoxious figures ever to occupy the Oval Office."

On that note, the games begin! Here's Gene's author chat.

Dave Donelson. Dave Donelson is around to discuss his new novel, Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo.

It's an exciting romantic thriller about scandal, love, and death in the Congo. As the book cover copy reads, "Amid the bloody violence of the Congo's civil war, TV reporter Valerie Grey uncovers a deadly diamond-smuggling scheme that reaches from Africa to the White House."

More about the book on LibraryThing, Amazon. And check out the Heart of Diamonds webpage, where you can read the first two chapters of the book.

Dave, a library trustee, says that he'll be happy to discuss the book, writing, or current events in Africa with the LibraryThing community.

Here's Dave's author chat.

And, of course, they're just the new additions. There are five other chats going on right now:

.....

*I think this means he takes over if the president dies.

Laptop Stickers!

2008-09-12T14:47:00.005-04:00

Admit it. You're sitting in a coffee shop with your computer and you wish everyone around you knew of your love for LibraryThing.

Problem solved!

We now have stickers for sale that you can use for anything—but they're perfect for laptops. They're made on a premium "pressable" stock, making them removable and repositionable. So you can stick it on your laptop, then decide to rearrange or take it away completely without leaving sticker mess.

You can, of course, use them for non-laptop purposes as well. Warning: they've got a laminated front, but they're paper-based—so they might not make a good bumper sticker.

They're for sale for only $2 each—and free First Class shipping in the US (you can upgrade to priority mail, or pay to have it shipped internationally).

Read more and buy 'em here: LibraryThing laptop stickers

September Early Reviewer Books

2008-09-05T16:49:00.000-04:00

The September batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 1,020 copies of 50 books available this month.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Sunday, September 30th at 6pm EDT.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to tons of new countires around the world. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month:

Algonquin Books	AMACOM Books	Andrews McMeel Publishing
Ballantine Books	Bantam	Bloomberg Press
Canon Press	Cheops Books	Clark-Nova Books
Delacorte Press	DiaMedica	Doubleday Canada
Down in the Country Press	F+W Publications	Grand Central Publishing
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt	Hunter House	Loving Healing Press
Marshmallow Press	McBooks Press	McClelland & Stewart
Modern History Press	Open Letter	Orbit Books
Raven Tree Press	Sourcebooks	South Dakota State Historical Society Press
Springboard Press	Spunky Books	Tarcher
Unbridled Books	University of Chicago Press	W.S. Beetle & Company
WaterBrook Press	Welcome Books

The Legacies, One Year Out

2008-09-03T06:34:00.000-04:00

One year ago today, after a few days of discussion on Talk about the potential of adding Thomas Jefferson's major library to LT, the I See Dead People's Books group was formed, marking the beginning of what we now know as the Legacy Libraries project (here's our very first Talk thread, wherein I make some very silly suggestions, just going to show how vitally important the collaborative process has been to this project).

We've come a long way since last 3 September. More than 100 LT members working together have completed twenty-seven libraries; thirty-two more are currently in the process of being entered. That amounts, as of this morning, to 47,773 books - a pretty impressive year's work by any standard.

Since my last blog-update, some very interesting Legacy Libraries have been completed, including those of Mormon church founder Joseph Smith; Thomas Jefferson's childhood friend Dabney Carr; authors Theodore Dreiser (left), Robert E. Howard, and Charles Lamb (below right); and English scientist/theologian/historian/educator Joseph Priestley (above right).

The Legacy projects have also begun to attract some publicity and media attention, which is always welcome in that it draws more focus not only to the importance of these libraries but also to the value of LT in making these collections possible. I and several other members were interviewed for a piece in this month's Fine Books & Collections magazine (on newsstands now) and on Monday morning I spoke with Clare Graves of the BBC Scotland program "Book Talk" about the projects (you can listen here for the next few days; we're in the first fifteen-minute segment).

Here's to many more years and many more libraries - onward and upward! As always, if you're interested in helping out on a library or would like to start one for your favorite historical reader, stop by and jump in.

Quotations, Epigraphs and Blurbers

2008-09-02T03:06:00.002-04:00

I've added three fields to Common Knowledge, fun fields that should keep the more obsessive of us busy for a while, and which move us somewhat closer to being the "IMDB of books"—quotations, epigraphs and blurbers.

Quotations. Members have been wanting a place to stick interesting or important quotations for some time, often keeping them in their quotations field.

There are, of course, sites devoted to literary quotes. But none can match their quotes against the books in your own library, giving you more incentive to add them. Together with first and last words, added recently, I foresee all manner of fun applications—guessing games blog widgets that cycle through quotes from your library, etc.

Example: The Stars my Destination (Tiger! Tiger!) by Alfred Bester

Epigraphs. Users asked for this to be separated from quotations.

Example: I am in an epigraph free-room. Help!

Blurbers. If you're not in publishing, you may be unfamiliar with this term. A blurber is someone who blurbs your book, writing up a very short review for your publisher, who selects a sentence or two and puts it on the back cover. If/when your book goes into paperback or gets reprinted, the blurbs may be replaced by quotes from professional reviewers, or they may not.

Often labeled "Advanced Praise for" or something like that, blurbs are an essential part of the authorial economy, and not always a pretty part, as Rebecca Johnson wrote in Slate:

"So much of blurbing process is a corrupt quid pro quo. You praise my book; I'll praise yours. In the '80s, Spy magazine ran a monthly column on the very topic called 'Log Rolling in Our Time.'"

I'm looking forward to seeing this information develop. It's well known that blurb relationships are reciprocal, and that some people write blurbs for more books than--it seems--they could ever read.

Example: Hidden Iran by Ray Takeyh, with the ubiquitous Fareed Zakaria and Zbibniew Brzeznski.

Breaking Dawn review contest winners

2008-08-29T12:28:00.004-04:00

The suspense is over—behold, the winners of the Breaking Dawn review contest!

When the contest closed on the 15th of August, there were already 119 reviews in (for a book that had been out just two weeks). As promised the top three reviews (those with the most "thumbs-up" when the contest closed) win a $50 gift card to Amazon, Abebooks, Booksense, or any independent bookseller of their choice, a LibraryThing t-shirt and a year's free membership (to keep or give away).

The top three are:

Seven runners up (the next seven reviews with the most "thumbs-up") win a LibraryThing t-shirt and a year's free membership (to keep or give away).

And then forty reviewers were randomly chosen from everyone who both wrote a review and voted for others' reviews. They'll each receive a year's free membership (to keep or give away).

Congratulations to everyone who participated! Winners, email Lindsey: info@librarything.com to claim your prize (include your user name)! If you won a tshirt, include your mailing address, and preferred t-shirt color and size (see the choices here).

Cover page changes

2008-08-28T02:30:00.002-04:00

I've revamped each work's "covers" page—a.k.a. "change cover"—to emphasize the higher-quality images among out 1,000,000 covers.

1. The images are bigger, so you can see quality, and because covers are so beautiful.
2. The algorithm now sorts larger covers higher, so that members are more likely to pick higher-quality versions of their cover. The existing sort order was reinforcing the use of low-quality images, even when LT had high-quality ones.
3. High-quality images now say "high quality" and list the original dimensions.

Here are some examples: The Odyssey, Pnin, The Kama Sutra, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Origin of Species, Life of Pi, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

News you can... discuss

2008-08-26T11:42:00.002-04:00

Big news today—Amazon now owns 100% of our rival and bête noire, Shelfari.

With a lot to do today, I don't have time to blog-ify it, but you can read about it on Talk and talk back. We've always relied on members to direct the site. We could use your advice now more than ever!

Here's the post on Talk: http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=44126

August Early Reviewer Bonus Batch

2008-08-18T22:08:00.003-04:00

St. Martin's Press is responsible for this month's unprecedented and huge Early Reviewer bonus batch! They're giving out 1,000—yes, one thousand—copies of Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland.

The book is available to residents of the US and Canada, and the deadline to request a copy is Sunday, August 31st at 6pm EDT.

Request your copy here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

About the book: it's a brand new series featuring Elizabeth Phoenix, a cop with extraordinary psychic powers who's hot on the trail of a ruthless murderer- and whose life is about to change forever. Bestselling author Lori Handeland delivers and unforgettable heroine and a pulse-pounding series that you don't want to miss.

And, on their website, you can sign up to receive In The Beginning, the free prequel story to Any Given Doomsday.

August Early Reviewer books

2008-08-11T16:44:00.002-04:00

The August batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 56 books this month, and a grand total 1,274 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Sunday, August 17th at 6pm EDT.

Eligiblity:
Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to tons of new countires, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, France, Germany, and the Philippines! Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers, new and old!

Algonquin Books	Andrews McMeel Publishing	Ballantine Books
bluechrome Publishing	Cuneiform	Delacorte Press
Delta	F+W Publications	Faber and Faber
Loving Healing Press	McBooks Press	Modern History Press
Open Letter	Other Press	Picador
PublicAffairs	Raven Tree Press	Santa Fe Writer's Project
Solaris	South Dakota State Historical Society Press	Sparklight Press
St. Martin's Griffin	St. Martin's Minotaur	St. Martin's Press
Thomas Nelson	Tor Books	Unbridled Books
University of Illnois Press	W.W. Norton	WaterBrook Press
Willow Ridge Press	YMAA

LibraryThing Mobile upgrade for iPhone

2008-08-11T13:49:00.004-04:00

A number of users have noticed that LibraryThing mobile (http://www.librarything.com/m/) looked weird on iPhones. We made a few changes and it now looks right.

We are, of course looking at more consequential upgrades. The main issue right now is the lack of an ability to add items to LibraryThing. Anyway, that's what I want to do—add books while standing at a bookstore, for example.

Series, Awards, Characters, Places

2008-08-11T02:59:00.007-04:00

Some time ago we added pages for series. We've now added pages for three other Common Knowledge fields: Awards, Important Places and People/Characters.

All four page types, together with the author pages, now also sport extensive cross-linking, so you can get from Stephen King to the Bram Stoker Awards to Hannibal Lecter to the Marquis de Sade to Cornwall to Guenevere. (Bonus points if you can get back!)

Here are some observations on the various page types:

Awards. Awards are important to a lot of readers. Personally I have no use for them, but they're fun to browse through. And there are so many! Sure, we've all heard of the British Book Awards or the Hugo. But how about the Compton Crook Award, Macavity Award or Printz Award?

Places. Some of the most interesting places are the small ones. Paris is already too much, and even Philadelphia. But Antarctica is small enough to take in, and large enough to be interesting. So too Martha's Vineyard and Petra, Jordan (one part Left Behind, one part Indiana Jones and another academic).

But we need more for Faerie, Hell and particularly Moldova. As for Nuevo Rico, where are the Nuevo Ricans!

Speaking of odd, The Playboy Mansion is currently occupied by Shel Silverstein. What?

Series. Series pages aren't new. But I might as well drop that series are the most complete, best Common Knowledge data. It's not just Harry Potter, Star Wars or His Dark Materials, but also New American Nation, Time-Life: Mysteries of the Unknown and Hellenistic Culture and Society.

People/Characters. A lot of fun can be had here, particularly with characters that cross between fiction and non-fiction, like Lincoln and Alexander the Great and Pope Alexander VI. You will, of course, find familiar faces like Jack Aubrey, Gandalf and Sherlock Holmes.

Fun can be had with minor characters. Take Reepicheep from the Chronicles of Narnia. Can you remember which books he appears in? (It's Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Last Battle; if you found that easy, how about Jill Pole?)

The "related" boxes can show up scarce data. For example, right now God is showing up related to 69 individuals. Jesus is number one, but he's followed by Bernice Summerfield, apparently a character in Doctor Who. (Incidentally, Jesus is somewhat split between Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, etc.)

Post here or discuss on Talk.

Tim is gone! Incidentally, I am now on an official "code holiday." I have at least three days without any obligations whatsoever, and I intend to stay in, order pizza, stop answering the door, stop answering the phone, stop writing on Talk, and even—gasp!—stop answering email. I may even put one of those "vacation auto-reply" messages up. After three days, I hope I have something.

First and last words

2008-08-11T02:38:00.002-04:00

"Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians."

Recognize that sentence? It is, of course, from Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. How about?

"Now, what I want is, Facts."

That's from Dickens, Hard Times.

We just introduced new work-based Common Knowledge fields for "First words" and "Last words." In the medium-to-long term, I'd love to work the data into a game—pick the sentence that goes with the work. If you're not comparing computer manuals to novels, it can be hard.

Find out more here.

A million free covers from LibraryThing

2008-08-07T12:37:00.007-04:00

A few days ago, just before hitting thirty million books, we hit one million user-uploaded covers. So, we've decided to give them away—to libraries, to bookstores, to everyone.

The basics. The process, patterned after the Amazon.com cover service, is simplicity itself:

Take an ISBN, like 0545010225
Put your Developer Key and the ISBN into a URL, like so:
http://covers.librarything.com/devkey/KEY
/medium/isbn/0545010225
Put that in an image tag, like so:
<img src="http://covers.librarything.com/devkey/KEY/medium/isbn/0545010225">
And your website, library catalog or bookstore has a cover.

Easy details. Each cover comes in three sizes. Just replace "medium" with "small" or "large."

As with Amazon, if we don't have a cover for the book, we return a transparent 1x1 pixel GIF image. So you can put the cover-image on OPAC pages without knowing if we have the image. If we have it, it shows; if we don't, it doesn't.

The Catch? To get covers, you'll need a LibraryThing Developer Key—any member can get one. This puts a top limit on the number of covers you can retrieve per day—currently 1,000 covers. In fact, we only count it when a cover is made from the original, o our actual limit will be much higher. We encourage you to cache the files locally.

You also agree to some very limited terms:

You do not make LibraryThing cover images available to others in bulk. But you may cache bulk quantities of covers.
Use does not involve or promote a LibraryThing competitor.
If covers are fetched through an automatic process (eg., not by people hitting a web page), you may not fetch more than one cover per second.

You will note that unlike the new API to our Common Knowledge data, you are not required to link back to LibraryThing. But we would certainly appreciate it.

Caveats. Some caveats:

At present only about 913,000 covers are accessible, the others being non-ISBN covers.
Accuracy isn't guaranteed--this is user data--and coverage varies.
Some covers are blurrier than we'd like, particularly at the "large" size. This is sometimes about original files and sometimes about our resizing routines. We're working on the latter.

Why are you doing this? The goal is half promotional and half humanitarian.

First, some background. This service "competes" with Amazons cover service, now part of Amazon Web Services. Amazon's service is, quite simply, better. They have far more covers, and no limit on the number of requests. By changing the URL you can do amazing things to Amazon covers.

The catch is that Amazon's Terms of Service require a link-back. If you're trying to make money from Amazon Affiliates, this is a good thing. But libraries and small bookstores have been understandably wary about linking to Amazon. Recent changes in Amazon's Terms of Service have deepened this worry.

Meanwhile, there are a number of commercial cover providers. They too are probably, on average, better. But they cost money. Not surprisingly many libraries and bookstores skip covers, or paste them in manually from publisher sites.

That's too bad. Publishers and authors want libraries and bookstores to show their covers. Under U.S. law showing covers to show off books for sale, rental or commentary falls under Fair Use in most circumstances. (We are not lawyers and make no warrant that your use will be legal.) We've felt for years that selling covers was a fading business. Serving the files is cheap and getting cheaper. It was time for someone to step up.*

So we're stepping up. We're hoping that by encouraging caching and limiting requests, we can keep our bandwidth charges under control. (If it really spikes, we'll limit new developer keys for a while; if you submit this to Slashdot, we will be Slashdotted for sure!) And it will be good for LibraryThing—another example of our open approach to data. Although none of our competitors do anything like this—indeed our Facebook competitors don't even allow export although, of course, they import LibraryThing files!—we think LibraryThing has always grown, in part, because we were the good guys—more "Do occasional good" than "Do no evil."

If we build it, they will come. If the service really pick up, we're going to add a way for publishers, bookstores and authors to get in on it. We'd be happy to trade some bandwidth out for what publishers know—high-quality covers, author photos, release dates and so forth. We've already worked with some publisher data, but we'd love to do more with it.

*In the past, we had been talking to the Open Libary project about a joint effort. We even sent them all our covers and a key to the identifiers that linked them. But nothing came of it. To some extent that was our fault, and to some extent not. (I think them and us would differ on the blame here.) In any case, I was tired of the time and transactional friction, and wanted to try a different approach.

Thirty Million Books!

2008-08-06T14:57:00.002-04:00

LibraryThing has hit 30,000,000 books cataloged! We also recently hit 1,000,000 user-uploaded covers and 500,000 pieces of Common Knowledge data.* Tags stand just shy of 39 million.

Thirty million—more specifically 30,011,748—was the number of books in the Library of Congress, the largest "real" library in the world. Having passed two and three—Harvard and the Boston Public Library—our sights were on the LC. But the LC grew and the number changed (see ALA fact sheet), and now they have 32,124,001 books (the one at the end is priceless). So it'll be another month or so before we surpass them.**

The thirty-millionth book was The Making of a Surgeon by William A. Nolan (Wikipedia). It was entered by new member RobGillespie, and tagged "biography, medicine, surgery." Rob gets a free account.

The Making of a Surgeon, a landmark 1968 personal account, represents one of LibraryThing's strengths well. Amazon lists it at 393,843, but it's 74,730 on LibraryThing and in 1,300 WorldCat libraries. So, while it may not be selling well this year, it's on a lot of shelves and "in a lot of heads." If your surgeon went to school in the 1970s, there's a good chance he read it, much as doctor today might be reading Atul Gawande. One doctor-turned-novelist who read Nolen was Walker Percy, whose library members entered into LibraryThing. Small world.

The book is even more appropriate in light of the current publisher, Mid-List Press. Mid-List, a Minnesota non-profit publisher***, focuses on a segment of the book world, arguing:

"In the past, publishers built their reputations on midlist books. In recent years, however, such factors as the enormous prices paid for high-profile “frontlist” books and the growing domination of mass merchandisers have eaten away at the traditional support for the midlist."

My take is somewhat more optimistic—that the logic of the Long Tail is and will open up demand for mid-list and "bottom-of-list" titles. LibraryThing has a part in that too. One reason people read bestsellers is to talk about them with others. Sites like LibraryThing make it possible to have that sort of shared reading experience well down the Long Tail.

The hub of the Hub of the universe (Credit)

*In commemoration of the Common Knowledge milestone, we have released all the data VIA a free, creative-commons-licensed API. There's more free data coming soon—rhymes with "hovers." We're doing load-testing now.
**For the record, I am under no illusion LibraryThing is "as good" as the LC, or even as big in any real sense. For starters, we have a lot of duplicates—the unique count is more like five million. From a database and programming perspective, however, the number is fun.
***Among Mid-List's many books, I noticed The Writers' Brush (LT), a book of artwork by famous writers, which promises access to "the manuscript sketches that Fyodor Dostoevsky made of his characters, or the can-can dancers secretly drawn by Joseph Conrad."

Free Web Services API to Common Knowledge

2008-08-01T13:46:00.006-04:00

Introducing the LibraryThing Web Services API.

The API will eventually do many things.

For starters it includes all of the data in LibraryThing's Common Knowledge project, our groundbreaking "fielded wiki" for interesting book information (see original blog post). It includes fields like series, important characters, important places, author dates, author burial places, agents, edits, etc. If you're interested in building or enhancing book-data applications, this should be very interesting.

Common Knowledge is always in progress, but the results so far have been quite impressive. Members have made over 500,000 edits, and certain data types have become exceedingly useful and comprehensive. I'm particularly proud of our Series coverage (eg., Star Wars), better—we think—than any commercial series data.

Oh, and it's free! The data is made available under the highly permissive Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.

Architecturally, the Web Services API is a straightforward REST XML-based API. The back-end is modular, allowing us to easily expand the available methods in the future. It's request and response styles were modeled closely on Flickr's API—Chris is a big fan—so it should make it easier to find similar sample code. The documentation resembles theirs too.

Kudos to Chris for his work on this and let us know what you think (here).

Update: The other big announcement—another data release—won't be happening today. Too much to do!

Abebooks news: The scoop for LibraryThing

2008-08-01T09:20:00.005-04:00

Today Abebooks, the Canadian bookseller, announced that it was being acquired by Amazon, a company that needs little introduction. (See Amazon press release.)

Abebooks owns a minority stake in LibraryThing. This means that, after regulatory approval and finalization, Amazon will become, through Abebooks, a minority investor in LibraryThing.

I congratulate Amazon on a shrewd acquisition. Abebooks is a great company, full of wonderful people. They have accomplished great things (link). I have no inside info, but I can foresee Amazon's extraordinary technical infrastructure giving Abe a big lift.
Here's the scoop:

LibraryThing did not have any knowledge of or influence over this deal.
The majority of LibraryThing is in my hands. Abebooks holds a minority of the shares, with certain notable but limited rights. This situation does not change when Amazon acquires Abebooks.
Amazon will not get access to your data. The LibraryThing/Abebooks terms are specific. Abe gets only anonymized and aggregate data, like recommendations, and they can only use it on Abebooks sites (eg., Abebooks.com, Abebooks.de). Nothing has changed here.
Abebooks customers won't see much a difference. The name will survive and the Abebooks.com site will continue. Both employees and management will remain in Canada.
LibraryThing remains LibraryThing. We will continue to uphold and advance LibraryThing values, including open data, strict privacy rules and support for libraries and independent bookstores.

As always, I want your feedback on how to make LibraryThing the best book site on the web. I've started a Talk post to talk about all of this, or you can comment here.

Stay tuned for two more blog posts, both major. We have rushed two projects forward that demonstrate LibraryThing's commitment to open data and support for libraries and other book lovers.

Tim Spalding

Updates:

Check out the blog post of Boris Wertz, long-time COO of Abe and co-founder of JustBooks.
Local Victoria TV has a story with a good photo of Hannes, the CEO.
It's funny to watch the news fly by. 90% of the news stories rehash the press release without pointing to it, as if they are engaging in reporting. Odd

Twilight Review Contest

2008-07-31T14:02:00.003-04:00

In mere hours (at midnight on Friday night), the fourth book in the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn will be released. And I'm sure I won't be the only person up reading all weekend, and then waiting to talk about it as soon as I'm finished.

We figured it was a good time to have another review contest! We did this before when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, and it was great fun.

The prizes:

Three reviewers will get a $50 gift certificate to Amazon, Abebooks, Booksense, or any independent bookseller of their choice, a LibraryThing t-shirt and a free membership (to keep or give away).
Seven reviewers will will win a LibraryThing t-shirt and a free membership (to keep or give away).
Forty reviewers will get a free membership

That's right, that's FIFTY winners.

How the winners will be chosen:

The top three reviews--with the most thumbs-up--will get the big prize. The next seven will get the next prize.
The remaining forty winners will be randomly picked from all members who both wrote a review and voted for others' reviews.

So, when you finish reading, get writing! When you're done writing, take some time to read other reviews, and give the thumbs-up to the ones you think deserve it.

The contest ends on Friday, August 15th.

And then? Well, there are a ton of Twilight groups where you can stop by and join a discussion on Breaking Dawn, Bella, Edward, Jacob, and more. Here are a few:

LibraryThing for Libraries now found in FictionDB

2008-07-31T12:48:00.007-04:00

LibraryThing for Libraries, our library catalog enhancer, can now be found bulking up knowledge at the website FictionDB.

FictionDB, which has been around since 1999 (which is about 49 Internet years), started out as a romance fiction database, and has grown to include the suspense, western, and speculative genres.

LibraryThing for Libraries is a set of enhancements that can be added to an existing database to show tag clouds and recommended titles. (FictionDB calls it "Read These Yet?", which I love.)

Check out how the whole thing mashes up with the novel Dead Until Dark, and read more about our partnership at the FictionDB blog.