Archive for April, 2021

Monday, April 26th, 2021

TinyCat’s April Library of the Month: The Pioneers Association of South Australia

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

Each year Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures, a division of the American Library Association, celebrates Preservation Week to highlight the importance of preservation. Many TinyCat libraries have preservation within their mission including TinyCat’s Library of the Month for April. The Pioneers Association of South Australia manages a historical library centered around the pioneers of South Australia. Two of the library’s volunteers Alison and Julie were kind enough to field my questions this month:

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

Founded in 1935, the Pioneers Association of South Australia is a volunteer-run members organisation committed to perpetuating the memory of the pioneer settlers of South Australia and promoting their unique history.

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

The library of Pioneers SA has a collection of approximately 1500 items including books, electronic media, pamphlets, journals, posters, and history folders. The focus is on the pioneering years: the people who settled, the ships on which they arrived, and the early colonial settlements. Through the research of members, databases and history folders are being created, collating information about the passengers on the immigrant ships and the stories of these pioneers. We also aim to preserve records, portraits, relics, and historical materials associated with pioneer settlement.

What are some of your favorite items in your collection?

The shipping and family history folders are unique to the Association. There are also a number of old, out-of-print books that provide fascinating reading of early days in South Australia.

What’s a particular challenge your library experiences?

As a fully volunteer organisation it’s always a challenge to find the time to keep up with technological changes and work involved in maintaining the collection and assisting people with their family history inquiries.

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

TinyCat is easy to use for both library administration by volunteers and searching the catalogue by the public. It is very affordable and the online access to LibraryThing and TinyCat is also beneficial for all.


Want to learn more about the Pioneers Association of South Australia? Visit their website here and check out their full 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

Monday, April 5th, 2021

April EarlyReviewers Batch Is Live

Win free books from the April 2021 batch of Early Reviewer titles! We’ve got 109 books this month, and a grand total of 3,307 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, April 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, 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!

The Parliament House Press Candlewick Press Greenleaf Book Group
TouchPoint Press University of Chicago Press BOA Editions, Ltd.
wayzgoose press Scribe Publishing Company Revell
BookWhisperer City Owl Press Science, Naturally!
Black Rose Writing Imbrifex Books Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
Prufrock Press Henry Holt and Company Westminster John Knox Press
West Margin Press Red Adept Publishing Odyssey Books
Ooligan Press NewCon Press The Ardent Writer Press
Suspense Publishing Bellevue Literary Press Poolbeg Press
Smoking Pen Press Vibrant Publishers Jolly Fish Press
Flux BookViewCafe Wise Media Group
Crooked Lane Books Meerkat Press Rootstock Publishing
Frayed Edge Press BHC Press Icon Books

Labels: early reviewers, LTER

Monday, April 5th, 2021

TinyCat’s Fifth Birthday Celebration

April 5th marks five years since TinyCat’s official release, and the years have flown by for all of us at LibraryThing! The idea behind TinyCat was simple: we wanted to create an easy-to-use and affordable Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) for “tiny” libraries, those with under 20,000 titles. LibraryThing’s founder, Tim Spalding, did most of the coding while living in Kaş, Turkey, with developers Mike Topper and Chris Catalfo pitching in. Once the code was set, Chris Holland gave it the look you know and love today.

Once TinyCat went live, one of the first libraries to jump on board was Folio Seattle, a nonprofit member-supported library and cultural center in Seattle, Washington. Since then, libraries as diverse as the Library of Congress Young Readers Center, America’s Test Kitchen, and the Office of American Spaces, have joined us. We’ve helped thousands of educational, community, and religious libraries worldwide get their catalogs online with an easy management system.

So what’s next for TinyCat?

Our biggest goal for improving the TinyCat experience this year is finishing our major site redesign for the cataloging side of the system, LibraryThing, a project known more familiarly as “LT2”. With LT2, you’ll be able to manage your catalog in a mobile-friendly and more accessible way. It will also make future updates easier for us, meaning even more improvements over time. You can join our ongoing discussions and explore our latest releases by browsing our New Features Group on LT.

Birthday Giveaway and Store Sale!

To celebrate our fifth birthday, we’re giving away five gorgeous TinyCat totes (in blue or red) to TinyCat subscribers during the month of April.

Here’s how to qualify:

  • Have a current TinyCat subscription.
  • Share your TinyCat library in a Tweet anytime through the end of April.
  • Make sure to tag us @TinyCat_lib and add the #tinycatlibraries hashtag to your post.
  • The giveaway ends on April 30, so be sure to get your Tweet out before then.
  • We’ll call out five random tote winners from our @TinyCat_lib account throughout the next month. If we don’t call you out for the first (or second, or third, etc.) tote, you can share your library again to re-enter!

We’re also running a sale on all of our CueCat scanners and barcode labels in the LibraryThing Store for the month of April, so be sure to stock up: https://www.librarything.com/more/store.

Join our celebratory thread in the TinyCat Group for some happy birthday wishes! And thank you all for another great year.

Labels: birthday, sale, TinyCat