Archive for June, 2015

Thursday, June 25th, 2015

For ALA 2015: Three Free OPAC Enhancements

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For a limited time, LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) is offering three of its signature enhancements for free!

There are no strings attached. We want people to see how LibraryThing for Libraries can improve your catalog.

  1. Check Library.

    The Check Library button is a “bookmarklet” that allows patrons to check if your library has a book while on Amazon and most other book websites. Unlike other options, LibraryThing knows all of the editions out there, so it finds the edition your library has. Learn more about Check Library

  2. Other Editions

    Let your users know everything you have. Don’t let users leave empty-handed when the record that came up is checked out. Other editions links all your holdings together in a FRBR model—paper, audiobook, ebook, even translations.

  3. Lexile Measures

    Put MetaMetrics’ The Lexile Framework® for Reading in your catalog, to help librarians and patrons find material based on reading level. In addition to showing the Lexile numbers, we also include an interactive browser.

Easy to Add

LTFL Enhancements are easy to install and can be added to every major ILS/OPAC system and most of the minor ones. Enrichments can be customized and styled to fit your catalog, and detailed usage reporting lets you know how they’re doing.

See us at ALA. Stop by booth 3634 at ALA Annual this weekend in San Francisco to talk to Tim and Abby and see how these enhancements work.

If you need a free pass to the exhibit hall, details are in this blog post.

Sign up

We’re offering these three enhancements free, for at least two years. We’ll probably send you links showing you how awesome other enhancements would look in your catalog, but that’s it.

Find out more http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries or email Abby Blachly at abby@librarything.com.

Labels: alaac15, Lexile measures, librarything for libraries, LTFL

posted by Abby @1:31 pm 0 Comments »
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    • Wednesday, June 24th, 2015

    Sneak Peek: TinyCat for Small Libraries

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    We’ve done a lot of hinting about unveiling some big news at ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco this week, and now, we’re giving you a sneak peek… at TinyCat.

    What is TinyCat? TinyCat turns LibraryThing into a powerful, simple, online catalog for so-called “tiny libraries” (less than 20,000 titles).

    These smallest libraries—churches, synagogues, small schools, community centers, academic departments, etc.—have been using LibraryThing to catalog their collections for almost a decade. That continues with TinyCat. TinyCat offers a new way to view the catalog that’s cleaner and focused on helping patrons find and discover books in your library.(1)

    TinyCat is:

    • Simple. TinyCat is simple and clean. Faceted searching adds power.
    • Mobile. TinyCat looks and works great on every device and platform.
    • Flexible. TinyCat supports all media types, not just the books that drive LibraryThing.
    • Professional. Import and export MARC records. Track patrons and show item status.
    • Secure. HTTPS always.
    • Enhanced. TinyCat includes the best, most useful enhancements LibraryThing can offer—more than almost any “big-library” catalog has.

    Screenshots (click images for large size)

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    Method to our madness? It’s no coincidence that we’ve been rolling out lots of new features lately, many of which have been necessary to make TinyCat possible (think Barcode Support, Circulation, Advanced Search and now New Feature: MARC Import). There’s still more to come. We couldn’t be more excited.

    TinyCat is coming soon. (We were aiming for ALA, so it’s very close.)

    See us at ALA. Stop by booth 3634 at ALA Annual this weekend in San Francisco to talk to Tim and Abby and see TinyCat live. (We’ll show it with your collection, if you have one.)

    If you need a free pass to the exhibit hall, details are in this blog post.

    Interested? If you’re a librarian of a small library who might be interested in beta testing TinyCat, get in touch! Drop us an email at info@librarything.com.

    1. In library terms, TinyCat is the OPAC (“Online Public Access Catalog”), and LibraryThing is the ILS (“Integrated Library System.”)

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

    posted by Loranne @1:33 pm 71 Comments »
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    • Wednesday, June 24th, 2015

    New Feature: MARC Import

    This is not a bobcat

    MARC is the library standard for bibliographic records. We’ve always parsed MARC records behind the scenes, when members searched one of our 700 library sources, or our Overcat collection. A few years ago, we introduced the ability export your LibraryThing collections as MARC records, even if your records didn’t start out in MARC.

    Now, we’re adding the last piece: MARC importing, for all the small but professionally-cataloged libraries that use LibraryThing.

    Try it Out. Check it out on Import or directly to MARC Import.

    How it works. To use MARC import, you’ll need to have your library data in a .marc file format. Depending on how large a file you’ve got, the import process may take a few minutes. The good news is, you’ll receive a notification from LibraryThing once it’s ready. From there, you’ll be able to review your import options—just like you would with any other import—and select the collections, tags, etc. you’d like to apply to the items you’re importing.

    What is MARC? MARC stands for Machine-Readable Cataloging. It represents a set of digital formats for describing items held by libraries: books, maps, CDs/DVDs, etc. You name it, if it’s in a library, MARC can handle it. Libraries the world over use MARC to standardize their item records in such a way that information about different types of items can all be fed into (and retrieved from) cataloging systems uniformly.

    MARC fields are denoted by numerical tags, that indicate what type of information is contained in that field. For example, the title of a given work is always in field 245.

    Don’t Upload The New York Public Library! This is for small—or, better the tiny—libraries that use MARC records and LibraryThing. Uploads are capped at 10,000 records total, so don’t try to upload 100,000 records. “Regular” libraries, big and small, should check out LibraryThing for Libraries, a remarkable suite of catalog enhancements.

    Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think on Talk.

    Labels: cataloging, new features, small libraries

    posted by Loranne @9:31 am 3 Comments »
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    • Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015

    ALA 2015 in San Francisco (Free Passes)

    Kate at ALAMW15

    Our booth. But this is Kate, not Tim or Abby. She had the baby.

    Tim and I are headed to San Francisco this weekend for the ALA Annual Conference.

    Visit Us. Stop by booth #3634 to talk to us, get a demo, and learn about all the new and fun things we’re up to with LibraryThing for Libraries!

    Stay tuned this week for more announcements of what we’ll be showing off. No, really. It’s going to be awesome.

    Get in Free. In the SF area and want to go to ALA? We have free exhibit only passes. Click here to sign up and get one. It will get you just into the exhibit hall, not the conference sessions themselves.

    Labels: ALA, alaac15

    posted by Abby @2:17 pm 4 Comments »
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    • Thursday, June 18th, 2015

    New: Printed Library Barcode Labels

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    Keep track of your books like a pro.

    Yesterday we released our new Barcode support feature along with our new Take Inventory feature for Your Books. Good things come in threes, so today we bring you a new product to our Store lineup—printed barcodes!

    Why barcodes? Barcodes are for tiny libraries and private individuals who want to keep better track of their books. Slap a barcode on a book and you’ve got a readable, scannable, unique number forever. Once its got a number, you can do inventory and lend books the right way.

    For regular users, a small barcode, on the back cover or inside, is an excellent way to know when you’ve cataloged a book and when you haven’t.(1) Users who want to do inventory can add them to all their books, or just to the ones without scannable back-cover ISBNs.

    Where do I get them? You can order your own custom barcodes right here in our Store:

    LibraryThing Store > Printed barcodes

    Price

    • We’re charging $10.00 for the first 500 labels, and $5.00 for each additional set of 500.
    • That’s 20-25% of what traditional vendors, like Follett, charge.(2)
    • No really, this is a steal!

    Other details

    • Quality. Our labels are acid-free, premium stock for archival use. They have a pH-neutral, permanent, pressure-sensitive adhesive.
    • Size. The labels are 1 1/4 x 5/8 inches. That’s small enough to be visually inconspicuous, but it fits numbers up to 100,000 easily. They come in sheets of 100 (102, actually, because math).
    • Symbology. We chose Code 39, perhaps the most common library barcode format. The codes also include the number, written out, in case the barcode won’t scan.
    • Customization. You can add your own text above the code, such as your name or LibraryThing ID (up to 25 characters). You can also add a tiny LibraryThing icon ( ) before your text. Or you can go for barcode-only labels.
    • CueCat Support? The LibraryThing barcodes work great with LibraryThing’s super-cheap CueCat scanners. LibraryThing search and Take Inventory features even read unmodified CueCat codes.

    Go ahead and check it out.

    You can read more about using barcodes in Your Books here. And of course join our discussion on Talk!

    Here are some more photos:

    IMG_5317IMG_5315IMG_5312IMG_5310IMG_5309IMG_5308IMG_53052015-06-15 13.15.422015-06-15 13.12.222015-06-15 13.09.372015-06-15 13.04.022015-06-15 12.53.332015-06-15 12.51.302015-06-15 12.44.42

    1. Other members use our stamp or mini-stamp.
    2. Comparable barcodes cost about that much. In fairness, however, if you spend even more from these companies you can get more durable barcodes, intended for high-circulation public collections.

    Labels: barcode scanning, new feature, new features, small libraries

    posted by Tim @9:51 am 18 Comments »
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