Archive for December, 2010

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

Welcome Jeremy!

On January third LibraryThing will welcome a new employee: Jeremy Dibbell (member JBD1).

Jeremy is well-known to the LibraryThing community as the leader of the Legacy Library and Libraries of Early America, which he’s been coordinating since 2008.

Jeremy will be taking on our newly created “social media” job. He will coordinate the Early Reviewers program, State of the Thing, LibraryThing for Publishers, LibraryThing for Authors, our Facebook and Twitter presence, and everything else involving member projects and outreach. We’re going to take advantage of his particular knowledge of rare books and historical books, through outreach to these communities and the development of new features for them.

Jeremy’s job is comprehensive and global. He’s here to fix what’s ailing, shut down what isn’t worth it, and organize and create the things that will carry us forward.

Jeremy has two masters from Simmons College, one in Library Science and another in History–the exact same combination Abby has. We stole him from a job at the Massachusetts History Society, where he was an Assistant Reference Librarian, and worked on much of their social media, editing the blog and creating the John Quincy Adams Twitter diary.

We wanted to hire Jeremy the instant he indicated he might be available. I’ve myself have known him for a couple years now, and have developed enormous respect for his intelligence and dilligence. We already have a good working relationship, from Legacy Libraries and other projects. I can’t wait to work with him fulltime.

Jeremy will start work on January third, jumping into a lot of open issues and a mailbox that’s already full.(1) On the seventh he’ll be flying off to San Diego with Abby for the Midwinter meeting of the American Library Association. If you’re going, be sure to say hi him.


1. How cruel is that?

Labels: employees, employment, jeremy dibbell

Thursday, December 16th, 2010

Libraries up: C.S. Lewis, Dickinson, Yeats, Mann, Tufte

It’s been a while since we’ve done an update on the Legacy Libraries project, but that doesn’t mean the volunteers haven’t been plugging away. In fact just in the last few days we’ve seen a few major completions:

The library of C.S. Lewis (2,166 books) has been cataloged from the holdings of Wheaton College (IL), where it is now housed, thanks to the efforts of BOB81bokaicnbDisassemblyOfReasoniowaboy277janepriceestradaMrsBond, and zwoolard. His top shared libraries (weighted) are rwb24 and jfclark; among the other Legacies his collection most resembles those of T.E. Lawrence and Robert Graves. Check out his author cloud too (lots of G.K. Chesterton, F. Marion Crawford, Roger Lancelyn Green, and George MacDonald).

Some of the members who helped assemble these Legacy Libraries:

Since November 2008 a small but very dedicated team of users (jcbrunner, LolaWalser, GirlFromIpanema) have been working on the very large collection of Thomas Mann’s books, now held (mostly) at the Thomas Mann Archive in Zurich. That project is now complete, with a grand total of 3,282 titles (the largest chunk of which were by Mann himself, with Strindberg, Nietzsche, and Goethe also well represented – see the full author cloud). Mann’s top shared LT libraries (weighted) are Hughie2 and suedwind2.

Another interesting recent completion is the addition of the known books read by/belonging to Emily Dickinson (163 titles). Though we know Dickinson read and probably owned many more books, these are those most closely associated with her. This project was undertaken by nbt00, and completed by benjclark. Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Edward Hitchcock are the names that pop out of her author cloud. Dickinson’s shared libraries are heavily skewed toward other Legacies: the Mordecai Family, Herman Melville, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti top the list (top shared among non-Legacies is Django6924).

Another long-running Legacy project was William Butler Yeats, whose catalog eventually amounted to 2,284 titles. Assistance for this was provided by Tim, michael_p, mountebank, inge87, and myself (JBD1). Yeats also had many copies of his own works; other well-represented authors include Rabindranath Tagore, Arthur Symons, Ezra Pound, John Masefield, T.S. Eliot, and William Blake (author cloud). Like Dickinson his shared libraries are weighted toward Legacies, with Lawrence, Lewis, and Alfred Deakin leading the pack.

In November some of us got the opportunity to work on a special flash-mob catalog project for a living author: the research library of Edward Tufte (197 titles), which was sold at Sotheby’s on 2 December. Professor Tufte graciously allowed us to add the titles (which include some really amazing works) to LT, which we were happy to do. Catalogers included thornton37814, Katya0133, jcbrunner, jburlinson and me.

As far as the Libraries of Early America project goes, I’m focused at the moment on the Signers of the Declaration of Independence in an attempt to find library information for all 56 of them. You can track progress on the project wiki: so far fifteen libraries have been entered, I have full or partial lists for eight more that I’ll be adding, and there are still a few outstanding queries. Recent additions include Stephen Hopkins (RI) and George Taylor (PA). If anyone has individual books or sources to add to this list, I’ll be delighted to know of them (and if you live in Philadelphia or Annapolis and want to undertake an LT-mission, we’ll be happy to reward you for your efforts!).

The list of Legacy Libraries in progress remains impressively long; if you want to join in, please do! Contact the LTer listed on the page, or me, and we’ll be happy to get you started. If you have a potential Legacy you’d like to get started on, or want to chat about the projects, come on over.

Labels: flash-mob cataloging, legacies, legacy libraries

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Free books! December Early Reviewer batch is up

The December 2010 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We’ve got 64 books this month, and a grand total of 1,255 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 Monday, January 3rd at 6PM EST. (Since we’re starting later in the month, we’re not closing the batch until after the holidays).

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. 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!

Ballantine Books Bell Bridge Books W.W. Norton
HarperCollins Childrens Books B&H Publishing Group WaterBrook Press
Canongate Books Kensington Publishing Dafina
Signet William Morrow Human Kinetics
Henry Holt and Company Pook Press The Permanent Press
Taylor Trade Publishing QED Press Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
Hachette Book Group Strawberry Books Nolo
Demos Medical Publishing Random House Tundra Books
Two Harbors Press BookViewCafe Putnam Books
Faber and Faber Orca Book Publishers Clerisy Press
Menasha Ridge Press DiaMedica Gefen Publishing House
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Hunter House Maine Misadventures

Labels: early reviewers

Monday, December 13th, 2010

LibraryThing Holiday Sale


A LibraryThing Holiday for all

The LibraryThing holiday sale is now on.

Check out the LibraryThing Holiday Store.

CueCat barcode scanner. Regular price $15. Holiday price $10!

LibraryThing tshirt (black or maroon) Regular price $15. Holiday price $10!

Gift memberships: Regular price $10/$25. Holiday price $5 (year) / $15 (life).

But wait, there’s more… All CueCats and t-shirts come with a FREE LibraryThing laptop sticker (retail value $2.00).

Mailing guide: Order by the 19th of December for first-class USPS shipping by Christmas, and the 20th for Priority USPS shipping. International end-dates vary.

Labels: christmas pudding