Our April Fool’s joke, LibraryThing buying out the name LibraryStuff, followed on the April-Fools-resignation of Library Stuff blogger Steven Cohen, who later posted about his new job at LibraryThing. Now the ALA has wrapped LibraryThing in another April Fools, announcing the Library of Congress’ decision to put Google in charge of all it’s cataloging. The post ends:

“The source also mentioned plans to migrate the OPAC to LibraryThing and turn the American Memory site into a Wiki.”*

I must say, getting mentioned by the ALA, even if as a joke, is a little thrilling. But it all comes around, since Steven Cohen said in Public Libraries magazine (March/April 2006), “I’ve seen the future of online catalogs, and its name is LibraryThing.” March/April, huh? Was he fooling?

*Sic on the caps on “Wiki.” Since American Memory is a product of the Federal Government, someone SHOULD make a wiki for it. I’m sure parts would get worse, but parts would also get better.

Labels: american memory, april fools, library of congress