Monday, March 12th, 2018

Introducing the LibraryThing Alexa Skill

Introducing the LibraryThing Skill for the Amazon Echo, Dot and other Alexa devices. Take a look:

The LibraryThing Alexa Skill is a weird but easy way to add books to your LibraryThing account. Just stand in the foyer, with a bag of new books, or on top of a rickety bookshelf ladder in the attic, and say:

Alexa, tell LibraryThing to add [Book Title] by [author]

And Alexa will add the book. Or it will try to. It’s not perfect.

To get a higher success rate, skip the title and author and just read the barcode, or ISBN number, off the back of your book:

Alexa, tell LibraryThing to add [Barcode or ISBN number]

There are a few other commands. Try:

Alexa, ask LibraryThing how many books I have.

To dazzle your friends with your intelligent personal assistant and your impressive library.

What Else?

Have fun!


Credits:

  • The Alexa app was coded up by Chris Holland (@conceptdawg), who did a bang-up job, with an immature programming environment.
  • Thanks to Abby and Puck (pictured) for the video.

Labels: app, new features

9 Comments:

  1. Lise M McGuinness says:

    Thank you!!!! This is officially my favorite skill!

  2. Aerrin says:

    Wow, nice! This will probably get me to start keeping my reading log again!

  3. Blanchard says:

    Will this work with ASIN insteas of ISBN?

  4. Graeme says:

    It would be great if Alexa could use the Amazon Dash Wand to read the barcode.

  5. drkfolklore says:

    Alexa, tell me where I can hide the body…

  6. Derek Johnson says:

    Can you make this available on the UK please!

    Derek

    • Loranne says:

      We’d like to, but it may be some time coming, as we’re a bit tied up with other projects at the moment. We’ll be sure to announce it once it’s available!

  7. Jean-Louis says:

    Could I read a list of titles to Alexa in a place without internet access and then download it later ?

  8. Teresa says:

    It doesn’t seem to be working anymore. 🙁 Amazon won’t allow you to enable it.

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