Thursday, July 20th, 2006

New ways to link to a book

Announcing two new and super-easy ways to link from elsewhere to a LibraryThing book—simple links by ISBN and “sloppy title.” Some examples

http://www.librarything.com/isbn/0441172717
http://www.librarything.com/isbn/0380976749

http://www.librarything.com/title/voyage_of_the_dawn_treader
http://www.librarything.com/title/the+educated+imagination
http://www.librarything.com/title/tender violence

Why is this good? People—members and others—are increasingly using LibraryThing as their link-of-choice when blogging about a book. We are flattered, but think it also makes sense. LibraryThing “goes with the grain” of blogging. Like blogging LibraryThing is participatory and generous of external links—soon to get more generous. Many want to plug into that vibe, not just offer a place to buy the book.

The ISBN search works just as you might expect. (Note, however, that it pulls up the whole “work,” probably composed of a number of books, ISBN and not.)

The title search is the fruit of LibraryThing’s increasingly powerful data. It is quite tolerant:

http://www.librarything.com/title/Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies

http://www.librarything.com/title/Guns, germs, and steel
http://www.librarything.com/title/Guns germs steel

All work equally well. Now and then the first guess will be wrong. Mostly it’s dead on. Oh, you can represent spaces as underscores, plus signs (+) or, in most editing software, leave them as spaces.

Let me know what you think!

*for example, giving Val McDermid’s The Mermaids Singing instead of my wife’s The Mermaids Singing. Val has more copies, but the wife should win. The fact that she doesn’t is testimony to my integrity! I don’t unfairly promote by wife’s wonderful books–available at all major retailors–through LibraryThing. Nor will I later this month when her newest novel, Every Visible Thing, is released.

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