LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a site which allows members to catalogue their personal book collections online, using catalogue records obtained from Amazon, the Library of Congress and hundreds of other libraries worldwide. Members have catalogued over 24 million books so far, making it a WorldCat of personal libraries. In addition to the bibliographic data, members add social data such as tags, reviews and ratings, which LibraryThing can use to produce all sorts of statistics and recommendations. LibraryThing is also developing an increasing number of applications for libraries, such as LibraryThing for Libraries (incorporating social data into OPACs), LibraryThing Local (a directory of libraries and bookstores) and ThingISBN (a quick related ISBN generator).

Sign up and create your library

Go to the home page (http://www.librarything.com) and sign up – all you need is a username and password
Look at the very short introduction to get a feel for how LibraryThing works (http://www.librarything.com/quickstart.php)
Click on the ‘add books tab’ and try adding a few books (anything you like!) to your library. You can choose to search any cataloguing source – Amazon or a library. Add some tags.
Try the batch upload option (‘import books’ at the bottom of the screen) using the following URL under ‘grab from a web page’: http://socialouls.wetpaint.com/page/LibraryThing+ISBNs

Explore social cataloguing

Take a look at your library (‘Your library’ tab) and look at the LibraryThing record of one of the books you entered by clicking on its title.

Look at the social data down the middle of the page, the tags, recommendations and reviews.
Click through to find similar books from tags and recommendations. If you want something different, try the un-suggester (‘anti-recommendations’).
Look at the bibliographic record under ‘details’ on the left-hand side.
Explore the ‘buy, borrow or swap’ box on the right-hand side – try clicking through to OLIS via WorldCat.
Go to your profile page (‘your profile’ tab). Look in the ‘members with your books’ box on the right-hand side and take a look at some other people’s catalogues.
Go to the ‘tools’ tab and create a widget for your blog, if you are happy with how to do this in Blogger. If you want to see how this looks, look at the VHL blog (http://vereharmsworthlibrary.blogspot.com) – there is a LibraryThing widget in the sidebar.
If you’ve got a feed reader set up, try subscribing to the feed of new books either from your own library or someone else’s in your reader (the links can be found on the right-hand side of any profile page).

LibraryThing innovations

Take a look at the zeitgeist pages (http://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist) and the interesting stats, also the blogs (http://www.librarything.com/blog/ and http://www.librarything.com/thingology/) and the buzz pages (http://www.librarything.com/buzz) to see the innovations LT is bringing out and what all the fuss is about.
Take a look at LibraryThing for Libraries (http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries) and see it in action in an OPAC (http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/LTFL:Libraries_using_LibraryThing_for_Libraries).
Take a look at LibraryThing Local (‘Local’ tab at the top) and search for venues in Oxford. If your library is not on there already, try adding it (click ‘add venue’ at the top).
Explore the ‘legacy libraries’ (libraries of dead famous people) by clicking on the ‘stats’ link at the top of your profile page. On the right-hand side it will show you your overlap with legacy libraries such as Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson and Sylvia Plath. You can look at their libraries by clicking on their names.

Finally, post your thoughts on LibraryThing on your blog.

janelib	Latest page update: made by janelib , Mar 26 2008, 7:44 AM EDT (about this update About This Update Edited by janelib view changes - complete history)
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