Christopher has put together an extremely elegant new search widget. Put it on your blog and your visitors can search your library–or a group library–without having to go to LibraryThing. Color and size it various ways. It works like a dream, with animated “expanding” action. You are not as sexy as this, and never were.

Try it over on the left, or make your own. (Note: These is on my library, not yours.)

There is, of course, no reason it needs to be on a blog. Put it on your home page, or that of your church, academic department, bowling league, etc. It even relevancy ranks the results. (It beats your OPAC and it’s the size of a half-eaten stick of gum.)

Lastly, we’re not taking any guff about trivial features. This is an amazing piece of work. There are literally thousands of blogs sporting our original LibraryThing widgets. They are a great thing for LibraryThing—one of the main ways people find us. I’ll go so far as to say that, without the widgets, LibraryThing would have never succeeded, and I’d be making websites for lobster canneries.

PS: If you watch the site closely (many of you do), you’ll notice some major changes. They are already significant and will get bigger and “deeper.” We’re not going to blog about them again until we finish up.

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