Archive for November, 2014

Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

Welcome Ammar

We’re pleased to introduce Ammar Abu-Yasein (member LT_Ammar) to the LibraryThing gang!

Ammar will be working as a developer from across the pond (in Jordan), mostly on LibraryThing.com, developing new features and improving old ones. His first feature was improved export. Say hello to Ammar on his profile, or join us in the “Welcome Ammar!” Talk topic.

About Ammar

Born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, Ammar has loved computers and video games from an early age. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Toledo in 2011, and a year later he joined a strong and vibrant IT community in Amman, Jordan. Ammar has spent countless hours building all types of software, from mobile to web apps. He’s excited to join the LibraryThing team and develop further skills.

When he’s not in a staring contest with his monitor, Ammar enjoys picnics with his family, swimming, making money, and of course, reading! His favorite authors include Stephen King, Steve McConnel, and J.K. Rowling, respectively. Ammar dreams of one day owning a helicopter (who doesn’t?)!

Labels: employees

posted by Kristi de Bree @3:37 pm 6 Comments »
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    • Thursday, November 20th, 2014

    Cataloging improvement III: Better “Sort character” support

    Short version: We’ve added more tools for specifying how titles should sort.

    Background: LibraryThing has been sorting “The Road” under “R” not “T”, and allowing members to change where the sorting “starts” since 2007. Mostly, the system gets it right in the first place, especially if you use library data, whose records contain information on “non-filing characters” (within the 245 field, second indicator, of course). If it doesn’t, super-knowledeable members use the “pipe trick,” changing a title like Die Fleledermaus to Die ||Fledermaus, to mark the start of sorting explicitly.

    Bringing Sort Characters into the Open. To improve understanding and use of the feature, and to help troubleshoot when LibraryThing choses poorly, we’ve decided to expose the “sort character” (a.k.a. “non-filing characters,” “sort offset,” etc.).*

    You can now add the field to one of your “Your Books” views:

    cataloglist

    Edit and manual entry now get a tiny drop-down menu (on the right), so you can see and change the sort character number. (We aimed for inconspicuous enough not to frighten newbies, but not entirely hidden.)

    bookedit

    We’ve also improved the “pipe trick” by making the pipes invisible under normal circumstances. For example, here’s a book in “Your Books.”

    pipe1

    And here it is, with pipes, when you double-click to edit.

    pipe2

    In practice, pipes always disable and/or override the sort-chracter number.

    Come talk about this feature on talk.

    * I asked for help naming the feature. The geeky-cutest was definitely Chris Holland’s “alphabit.”

    Labels: new feature, new features, small libraries, Uncategorized

    posted by Tim @11:34 pm 0 Comments »
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    • Thursday, November 20th, 2014

    Cataloging improvement II: Date selectors

    Yesterday I added calendar “date selectors” to many of the places you can enter dates into LibraryThing. The selectors are optional—you can always just type instead. But they may come in handy.

    Click here.
    calendar_1

    And get a date selector.
    calendar_2

    Along with this, and along with the recent export improvements, a number of important long-running date bugs have been closed. We look forward to help identifying and squashing what remains.

    Come discuss on Talk.

    Technical note: We used jQuery UI’s datepicker.

    Labels: new feature, new features, small libraries

    posted by Tim @10:29 pm 3 Comments »
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    • Thursday, November 20th, 2014

    Cataloging improvement I: Better export

    filtering options

    The New Export Filtering Options

    We’ve just released a new and improved export feature. Check it out here.

    Major improvements include:

    • Export filtering. So you can export only books added since a certain date, books with a certain tag. You can also use the new search syntax to control your export even more precisely.
    • More fields. The new tab-delimited and JSON fields now include 41 exported fields, up from 16 or 29 in the old export formats. Essentially all book data should now be included in the export.
    • Richer fields. Flat files, such as tab-delimited text, have a problem with “multidimensional data,” such as secondary authors and their roles. The new format attempts to represent this data more completely, separating sub-values with pipe (|) characters.
    • JSON format. Export is now available in JSON format, a lightweight data format much used by programmers.
    • Better MARC options. We’ve improve the MARC options, for members interested in exporting to a library-industry system.
    • Not being partially broken. Always a good feature!

    Try it out. Go ahead and try out the new export.

    Discuss. Come discuss the new export features on Talk.

    Thanks. Export was re-engineered by Chris, Ammar* and me (Tim). It is based on the improvements Mike made to “Your Books” searching, and indeed the JSON format is effectively the format that the search system now indexes. (This will prove useful for troubleshooting problems with members.)

    Screen shots

    main options
    marc options

    UPDATE: We’ve added an explicit Excel format.

    * Who is Ammar? Stick around, we’ll tell you soon.

    Labels: new feature, new features, small libraries

    posted by Tim @2:47 pm 3 Comments »
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    • Tuesday, November 18th, 2014

    SantaThing 2014: Play Secret Santa with us!

    We’re pleased to announce that the eighth annual SantaThing is here at last!

    What’s SantaThing? SantaThing is Secret Santa for LibraryThing members.

    Done this before? SantaThing sign up is now open!

    How it works

    You pay into the SantaThing system (choose from $15–$50). You play Santa to a LibraryThing member we pick for you, by selecting books for them. Another Santa does the same for you, in secret. LibraryThing does the ordering, and you get the joy of giving AND receiving books!

    Sign up once or thrice, for yourself or someone else. If you sign up for someone without a LibraryThing account, make sure to mention what kinds of books they like, so their Santa can choose wisely.

    Even if you don’t want to be a Santa, you can help by suggesting books for others.

    Important dates

    UPDATE: SantaThing sign-ups have been extended!

    Sign-ups close MONDAY, December 1st at 9pm Eastern. By Tuesday morning, we’ll notify you via profile comment who your Santee is, and you can start picking books.

    Picking closes Monday, December 8th at 12pm Eastern. As soon as the picking ends, the ordering begins, and we’ll get all the books out to you as soon as we can.

    » Go sign up to become a Secret Santa now!

    What’s new this year?

    Every year we tweak SantaThing a little. This year we’re happy to have Portland’s own Sherman’s Books & Stationery, Powell’s, Book Depository, and Amazon (including national ones) as our booksellers. You can choose to have your books picked and sent from any of these stores at any and all price points.

    We’re also please to extend the Kindle Only option to all members, regardless of location. So long as your Kindle is registered on Amazon.com (not .co.uk, .ca, etc.), you can elect to receive your SantaThing gifts as Kindle ebooks. See more information about Kindle and SantaThing here.

    Shipping news

    Some of our booksellers are able to offer free shipping, and some are not. Depending on your bookseller of choice, you may receive $5 less in books, to cover shipping costs. You can find details about shipping costs and holiday ordering deadlines for each of our booksellers here on the SantaThing Help page.

    Go sign up now!

    Questions? Comments?

    See the SantaThing Help page further details and FAQ.

    Feel free to ask your questions over on this Talk topic. As always, you’re welcome to email us at info@librarything.com.

    Labels: santathing

    posted by Loranne @1:03 pm 2 Comments »
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