LibraryThing for Libraries

Cataloging is for Everyone

27Oct07

librarything

LibraryThing.com
A social site for book people
Regular people, cataloging their own books
Tags as subject descriptors
Reveiws, discussions, widgets for users
Works page, Author page, User page, User's libraries
Tremendous amount of data
Suggester offers recommendations based on what people read, not buy
Tags created by readers, not publicists

LibraryThing is a niche social networking site that taps into a particular passion of its users

LTFL's official site

Thingology shows (in a radically transparent way) the development of LTFL

librarything

Bridget Jones's Diary
Book Lust
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Tags, Suggestions, Other Editions (FRBR light)
Information in the catalog changes as the data generated by LT users changes

books=love

Why not?

LibraryThing is fun
Brings the unstructured, powerful intelligence of a social network into the library catalog
If our patrons could add tags, how many would there be?
A way to add innovative features without paying through the nose
Like most libraries, we don't have a programming team, money to hire a programming team or access to our ILS's code

photo from: stock.xchng

monkey

This was embarrassingly easy for me.

LibraryThing sent me some javascript
Copy
Paste
Dance with Joy

photo from: stock.xchng

Staff likes it (especially for Reader's Advisory)
When we show patrons, they love it
Working with a company like LT is a radicalizing experience
We could not have done this on our own or with a typical ILS vendor
In many public libraries, it is easy to feel that we're ahead of the user and this is a gentle innovation
Pre-fab folksonomy provides the fun and utility of social sites without asking users to (ugh) sign in or do any work

The LibraryThing people are really easy to talk to. Not your typical vendor experience.

LibraryThing for Libraries
casey@librarything.com

I'm happy to chat about this more

ksheehan@danburylibrary.org
Loose Cannon Librarian (My personal, not speaking for the library blog)

slides version | printable version