Archive for the ‘librarything for libraries’ Category

Friday, June 24th, 2011

The Perfect Library Catalog?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect library catalog. That is, it uses all nine LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancements—Tags, Lexile® Measures, Other Editions, Reviews, Shelf Browse, Similar Books, Series, Awards and QR Codes. All together, we’ve turned an ordinary Webpac library catalog into a social, shareable, graphical, informational and mobile beast!(1)

(Click to see full-size)

Great as it is, this catalog doesn’t exist. Abby and I are working on new handouts for LibraryThing for Libraries and Library Anywhere. For the former we needed a library that used all our enhancements, including a new one we’re announcing today (QR Codes). Unfortunately, although more than 200 library systems use LibraryThing for Libraries to make their OPACs better (a full list), none have absolutely every one of them today. So we’ve made our own, leaning heavily on the excellent Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service, which has almost all our enhancements.

If you’re in New Orleans for the American Library Assocation, come visit us at booth 827. We’ll show you how to make your catalog as good as this one! Or better, because it will actually exist. Oh, and pick up one of our nifty badge thingies.


1. If it had a search bar it would be truly perfect.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, ltfl libraries

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

LTFL adds translation

LibraryThing for Libraries libraries now have the ability to translate the interface of the LTFL enhancements–making them much more usable in non-English speaking countries.

The header section had always been editable but this new feature goes far beyond that, finding every instance of English text and letting each library translate the string into a different language, or even just to edit it to their liking. See, for example, the text in the lightbox that opens when you click to read reviews, at this German library in the screenshot to the right.

We know that the logical next step is to allow for a dual language interface–switch between English and French, for example–and we’re thinking through how we’ll handle that, but wanted to release this as a first step.

To enable the translation feature, click on “Edit/Translate Interface” on the Enhancements tab in the LTFL admin site. Then click “Edit/Translate Interface” under the Configure section, and start translating!

Questions? Email abby@librarything.com

Labels: languages, librarything for libraries, translation

Monday, May 16th, 2011

LibraryThing for Libraries adds Lexile measures (and it’s free)

Lexile measures in the catalog:

The Lexile browser:

LibraryThing for Libraries has added MetaMetrics’ The Lexile Framework® for Reading, commonly known as “Lexile measures,” to to its slate of enhancements. But rather than make it a paid enhancement, we’ve made it a free option for any library using any existing LTFL enhancements.

See it in action:

High Plains has also leveraged the fact that the Lexile browser can be “launched” on its own, placing it on their general search page.

As with other LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements, Lexiles works with virtually any library catalog (OPAC), and libraries have total control over the wording, placement and style of the enhancement within their catalog.

About LibraryThing for Libraries: LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) is a system of OPAC enhancements, designed to make your OPAC more engaging and informative. Lexile measures join the existing LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements: Tags, Reviews, Similar Books, Shelf Browse, Series, Awards and Other Editions. We also offer Library Anywhere, a cheap but full-featured mobile catalog for any OPAC.

To subscribe to LibraryThing for Libraries, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

If you already subscribe to one of the LTFL enhancements, you can just turn on Lexile measures—for free—by adding the div tag to your OPAC’s bibliographic template page.

Labels: Lexile measures, librarything for libraries

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Introducing Series and Awards

We’ve added a new enhancement to LibraryThing for Libraries, which combines two complementary enhancements: Series and Awards.

The Series enhancement draws from more than 50,000 series, and displays it right in the catalog. We provide a short description of the series (where available) and any related series (for example, The Chronicles of Narnia in both chronological order and in publication order).

For a given book, we display the name of the series and then the titles of all the books within that series. As with all the LTFL enhancements, each title links to that book’s page within your catalog.

See, for example, the page for Thursday Next in Lost in a good book in the Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service Catalog. The series enhancement (displayed on the left-hand side) tells you this book is in the Thursday Next series. Click that series name and you see the series browser, which displays all the titles in that series, and links to each book in the library’s catalog.  If a library doesn’t have a given book, we still list it, but without a link.

Chemeketa has chosen just to show the title of the series in the catalog, but you can also configure the enhancement to show a few “preview titles” and then a show more button which launches the series browser (as in the Pink Carnation screenshot to the right).

Some more examples of the Series enhancement in action on these book pages:

The Awards enhancement taps into more than 25,000 awards and honors. It covers a huge range of awards, from the National Book Award and the Booker Prize to the Salon Book Award and New York Times Notable Book of the Year, or even Oprah’s Book Club selections.

See the awards on these books:

Put it in your OPAC
For ordering information contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Questions? email me (abby@librarything.com)

Labels: awards, librarything for libraries, ltfl, series

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

LTFL new grid display option

We’ve added a new and attractive way to display LTFL enhancements within your library catalog—we call it grid display. Basically, it lets you set a number of rows and columns, and display the data in a grid format. You can also try using  just one row and several columns to create a horizontal look. Ah, the possibilities are endless!

To turn it on: In the LTFL admin pages, click to the Configure page for one of the enhancements (Grid display works for Similar books and for Other editions and translations). Then just click yes to turn it on, and set the number of rows and columns you want. That’s it!

Screenshots: For contrast, below is the same set of similar books, shown in our original classic list view and in list view with covers (Turn covers on!).

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Library Anywhere – more than just keyword search

When we first launched, Library Anywhere let you quickly and easily search your catalog using just the general keyword search. To a degree I still think this is the right default, especially for mobile when you want quick and dirty browsing. But for many OPACs, just the general keyword search wasn’t great, wasn’t enough, or wasn’t giving the best results.

We’ve now added the ability for a library to choose to include their “search type” dropdown menu in Library Anywhere. It uses the exact same search type menu as your OPAC, so you’ll have those same options—e.g. search by author, title, subject, etc.

As you can see in the pictures below, to save screen space, the dropdown menu doesn’t appear until you click in the search box.

We hope this makes searching Library Anywhere all the better.

Labels: library anywhere, librarything for libraries, mobile, mobile catalog

Friday, January 7th, 2011

ALA Midwinter 2011

Jeremy and I are headed to San Diego today (yes we were both awake by 3am) for ALA Midwinter! I’ll be demoing LibraryThing for Libraries and Jeremy will be helping out when he’s not running around talking to publishers. If you’re at ALAMW, come by and say hi—booth 2823.

I have a slew of new and notable LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements to show off:

Labels: ALAMW11, librarything for libraries, ltfl

Friday, January 7th, 2011

LTFL Improvement-Material Type in Other editions

Another new LibraryThing for Libraries improvement! At the request of one library, we added the ability to replace the ISBN displayed with each “other edition and translation” with the media type for it.

So instead of this: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Clarke, Susanna. (ISBN 1593977417)
You’ll see something like this: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Clarke, Susanna. [Book On CD]

See it in action at Ventura County Library, here

A big caveat—this feature is currently only available for libraries that subscribe to the Shelf Browse enhancement, or for libraries that can export their data as full MARC records. I know, seemingly unrelated, but it has to do with the way and the amount of data we index. For the curious, we’re using media types from the leader and 008 of the MARC record.

Want it?
Just email me! (abby@librarything.com)

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Add covers to your LTFL enhancements

We’ve added a little cover image eye-candy to the LTFL Catalog Enhancements. You can now choose to display cover images along with the title/author text. You can turn on cover images for Similar books, Other editions and translations, and in tag browser. In the tag browser, you can also choose to display a mini tag cloud for each book in the list, to give it a little context.

Because a picture is worth a thousand words (click to see larger images):

Without covers With covers

If you already have Catalog Enhancements in your catalog, here’s how to turn it on:
1. In the LTFL admin pages, go to your Global Configuration page and fill in the cover image URL line. It uses whatever covers your library already uses in your OPAC (Syndetics, Content Cafe, etc.)

2. Go to each enhancement’s configure page and click the “Show Covers” box, or the “Show Mini Tag Cloud in Tags Browser” box.

Labels: covers, librarything for libraries, ltfl

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Library Anywhere prices

Update 6/22/11: When we first launched Library Anywhere, we were eager to have public pricing. It’s certainly a novelty in the library world, where wiggly pricing and negotiation are the norm. And we’ve used public pricing for the past year, keyed off of how many physical buildings/branches the library has. What we’ve found, unfortunately, is that while it pleased many people, it made just as many people unhappy.  We’ve decided that we’re going to reevaluate our pricing metrics, and to take down this public list. And, of course, we’ll maintain pricing that’s far less then similar products!

Labels: library anywhere, librarything for libraries, mobile, mobile catalog