Archive for October, 2020

Friday, October 30th, 2020

TinyCat’s October Library of the Month: The Sustainability Trust Library

To read more about TinyCat’s Library of the Month feature, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

TinyCat’s October Library of the Month looks at a New Zealand-based organization working to make a sustainable lifestyle easy for anyone. The Sustainability Trust’s Volunteer Librarian Marion Llenart was kind enough to field my questions this month:

Who are you, and what is your mission—your “raison d’être”?

The Sustainability Trust is a social enterprise that believes sustainable living should be an available option for us all. With a focus on energy efficiency the Trust helps those economically and socially disadvantaged in our community to use energy efficiently in their houses and flats and create healthy homes. The library provides information that helps people reduce their impact on the environment.

Tell us some interesting things about how you support your community.

Our library has books and information which support our sustainable living community programmes such as learning how to compost and making garden containers from pallets, making cleaning products from natural products, making natural face products, and recycling.

What are some of your favorite items in your collection?

My favourite books include The Natural Home by Wendyl Nissen, which gives practical advice on sustainable living such as making a garden and cooking healthy food. Creating Cohousing by Kathryn McCamant is another favourite as this is a way of the future for those who like to live in sustainable communities. Lastly, Living Big in a Tiny House by Bryce Langston provides another alternative way of living sustainably, and this book gives beautiful examples of very small homey spaces.

What’s a particular challenge your library experiences?

The ongoing challenge for the library is always promotion and making sure people know we have all these resources and information on sustainability readily available and free of charge. As a small library we don’t have a large acquisitions budget so every new item needs careful research.

What is your favorite thing about TinyCat, and what’s something you’d love to see implemented/developed?

TinyCat has provided an online portal to the library. As well as providing access to physical resources, it allows promotion of online resources including films and websites. It has enabled me to promote the library’s Wiki, giving information on second hand shops, places to dispose of waste sustainably and local climate change organisations. It would be great to have the library Wiki developed so it can enable feedback, suggestions and discussion from library users.


Want to learn more about The Sustainability Trust? Visit their website at https://sustaintrust.org.nz/our-story and check out their TinyCat collection here.

To read up on TinyCat’s previous Libraries of the Month, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

Calling all TinyCat libraries: become TinyCat’s next Library of the Month—just send us a Tweet @TinyCat_lib or email Kristi at kristi@librarything.com.

Labels: libraries, Library of the Month, TinyCat

Tuesday, October 6th, 2020

Win $1,000 in books: LibraryThing needs a Project Specialist (Remote)

shelfshot

Update:

This position has been filled. See our blog post on our newest employee for more details.

We need to find a great new employee, so we’re offering $1,000 worth of books to the person who finds us one. What would you buy? Everything.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the local, chain or online bookseller of your choice. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible, and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are not eligible to win.


 

Job Ad: Project Specialist for LibraryThing

LibraryThing is hiring a project specialist (full-time, remote position). Although we’d love someone in Maine, the job is open to librarians and other book lovers throughout the United States.

You Must

  • Love books, love people
  • Write, edit, and communicate clearly and quickly
  • Work well independently and under direction
  • Manage your time effectively
  • Understand What Makes LibraryThing LibraryThing
  • Be organized and detail-oriented enough to read and follow all the directions in this ad

We Want

We will pick smarts, affability, and drive over any skill. And we’ll tailor the job to fit your skills and experience.

An ideal candidates might have some or all of these:

  • Book-world experience
  • Library experience (with or without an MLS)
  • Professional social media experience
  • Familiarity with bookish social media
  • Creativity and enthusiasm to learn new things
  • Excellent computer skills. (We’re a Mac shop.)
  • Technical skills (Excel, HTML, CSS, SQL)

Your duties will probably include:

As a small company, we have few “siloes.” So other duties calling on organization, adaptability, diligence, intelligence, and creativity will pop up, and you must play an engaged and constructive role in company meetings on any topic.

Your job may include occasional travel—once that’s possible again—to meet your coworkers and perhaps to publisher or library conferences.

Compensation

Because we’re willing to consider a wide variety of applicants, we can’t set a salary. But our health insurance is gold-plated. We require hard work and are only looking for full-time applicants, but we are unusually flexible about hours.

How to Apply

Send your resume in PDF format to tim@librarything.com. Your email should be your cover letter. It should show your ability to be persuasive but succinct.

If we interview you, we will ask you to write and edit something “live.” We do this together a lot, so if that makes you uncomfortable, this might not be the job for you.

Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Remember that part about diligence? Your subject line should be “Brie Cheese: [Your name]” so we know you are diligent.


 

Bookshelves image courtesy Germán Poo-Caamaño (see Flickr), CC BY 2.0.

Labels: employment, jobs

Monday, October 5th, 2020

October Early Reviewers batch is up!

Win free books from the October 2020 batch of Early Reviewer titles! We’ve got 72 books this month, and a grand total of 2,467 copies to give out. Which books are you hoping to snag this month? Come tell us on Talk.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Early Reviewers. If you’ve already signed up, please check your mailing/email address and make sure they’re correct.

» Request books here!

The deadline to request a copy is Monday, October 26th at 6PM Eastern.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, France, Germany, and many more. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Akashic Books Black Rose Writing Entrada Publishing
BookWhisperer TouchPoint Press Allium Press of Chicago
Best Day Books For Young Readers Incubation Press Unsolicited Press
Prufrock Press University of North Georgia Press The Parliament House Press
CarTech Books Meerkat Press Open Books
City Owl Press Ooligan Press Revell
Candlewick Press BookViewCafe Zimbell House Publishing
Emerald Lake Books Coach House Books Icon Books
Scribe Publications Westminster John Knox Press BHC Press
Red Adept Publishing

Labels: early reviewers, LTER