Author Archive

Tuesday, April 8th, 2014

LibraryThing’s 3rd Annual Edible Books Contest!

April has finally arrived, and with it, LibraryThing’s THIRD annual Edible Books Contest! Members served up a tasty batch of literary delights last year, and we’re expecting another strong showing in ’14.

The Rules

1. Create an “edible book.” We’re defining this broadly, so entries can include dishes:

  • referencing a book’s title or characters (puns are entirely welcome)
  • inspired by a book’s plot
  • in the shape of an actual book (or eBook, or scroll, etc.)
  • takeoffs on the LibraryThing logo

2. Take photos of what you made. The photo on the right is the grand-prize winner from last year’s contest, inspired by David Wong’s books. You can see other submissions from last year in the EdibleBooks2013 gallery. If your creation is super realistic, take a photo cross section of your creation as you eat it!

3. Upload the photo to your LT member gallery. Sign in, then go here and click the “Add another picture” link to add the image.

4. When adding the image, be sure to tag it “EdibleBooks2014“. This will add your image to the contest gallery, and counts as your entry. If your photo doesn’t have that tag, we won’t know that you’ve entered. You can see current entries here.

5. Tell us about your literary inspiration—and how you made it—in the “Title/description” box

DEADLINE: The contest will run for three weeks. Add your photos by 6pm Eastern on Tuesday, April 29th.

The Prizes

From all entries in the EdibleBooks2014 gallery, LibraryThing staff will choose the following winners:

Grand Prize (1)

  • $50 worth of books from Sherman’s Bookstore*
  • An LT t-shirt (size/color of your choice)
  • An LT library stamp
  • A CueCat
  • An LT sticker
  • Three lifetime gift memberships
  • Great honor and prestige

Runners Up (2)

  • Your choice of one LT t-shirt, stamp, or CueCat
  • Two lifetime gift memberships

As always, we will pick a few Honorable Mentions from the batch of entries. The more entries we receive, the more Honorable Mentions we can make—and all of them will get lifetime gift memberships.

Have fun, and good luck!

Fine Print: You can enter as many times as you like, but you can only win one prize. Your dish must be made of edible ingredients (no hats, lost-wax sculptures, performance art), and by entering the contest you certify that it is your own creation. Entries submitted to previous LibraryThing Edible Books contests will not be considered. All decisions as to winners and book prize slections will be made by LibraryThing staff, and our decisions are final. LibraryThing staff and family can enter, but can only be honored as prize-less runners-up. Any images you load stay yours, or you can release them under a copyleft license, but we get a standard “non-exclusive, perpetual” right to use them.

Questions? Comments? Post them over on Talk.


*Surprise books will be chosen by LibraryThing staff from Portland, ME’s newest indie bookstore, Sherman’s! We’ll make our selections based on the winner’s library.

Labels: contest, contests, fun

Friday, January 10th, 2014

New Feature: Spoiler Alert!

To accompany the next few rounds of One LibraryThing, One Book, we’ve rolled out another nifty feature that’s been requested for quite some time now: a spoiler tag. Use it throughout OLOB discussion, and anywhere you deem necessary on LibraryThing.

How does it work?

All you have to do is enclose the spoiler-y text in a “spoiler” tag, like so:

“And the real murderer was actually <spoiler>you</spoiler> all along!”

Your result will look like this:

“And the real murderer was actually you all along!”

If you’re desperate to share what happened at the end of a good book, but don’t want to give too much away, just wrap the sensitive lines in a spoiler tag. You’ll avoid unintentionally ruining someone’s read-through (and if they do actually click on it, well, they’ve had fair warning).

Questions? Comments?

Let us know over on Talk.

Labels: features, new features

Friday, January 3rd, 2014

Vote for One LibraryThing, One Book

One LibraryThing, One Book is kicking off the new year with a referendum! Following considerable discussion, and a concerted staff huddle, we’ve collected a few options for both February’s and March’s One LibraryThing, One Book.

Come rank the titles you’d like to read and discuss with the community!

Winners will be finally set on January 10th, at 10am Eastern.

February 10: Classic Horror

Click to vote | Discussion topic

March 10: Contemporary Fiction

Click to vote | Discussion topic

More Information

Reading will begin as soon as voting closes, and we announce the winners in a blog post.

Discussion for February starts on the 10th at 12 noon Eastern time.

You can read through each (or either) title at their own speed. We will also create continuations of “Introduce Yourself” and “First Impressions” threads. As before, please keep these threads spoiler-free before the discussion officially begins.

Discussion for March starts March 10th at 12 noon Eastern time.

If you’re new to One LibraryThing, One Book, be sure to read through our original blog post.

We had a quite successful first OLOB; almost 100 members joined our discussions about The Circle, and we posted over 1,000 comments collectively. The dystopian novel sparked many topics concerning current online privacy issues and future predictions both good and bad (but mostly bad). We may encounter similar discussion topics, depending on which book is chosen, so keep this in mind when voting. No matter what, I think we’ll end up with some excellent selections!

How the Titles Were Picked

The titles were picked by the LibraryThing team, attempting to take praise and criticism of the last pick into consideration. All the books are widely available in libraries, as paperbacks and in the used market. All are highly regarded and have good ratings—Frankenstein and Dracula somewhat lower, probably because they’re often assigned in schools.

To discuss the selection further, come see the Talk topic here.

Questions? Comments?

As always, general questions/comments about One LibraryThing, One Book, are welcome on this thread.

Happy voting!

Labels: One LibraryThing One Book

Tuesday, November 19th, 2013

Little Free Libraries, BookCrossing Zones and more in LibraryThing Local

Short Version:

LibraryThing members have banded together to add all known “Little Libraries,” including Little Free Libraries®, BookCrossing Zones™, the Dutch project “Minibieb” and others to LibraryThing Local, LibraryThing’s index and map of over 87,000 bookstores, libraries and other bookish places. Members have already added 749 of them. A slew of new features supports the project.

Check it out:

SqueakyChu‘s library, The Little Free Library of Twinbrook, in Rockville, MD

Long Version:

A long-time member, SqueakyChu, recently requested that we add Little Free Libraries (LFLs) to LibraryThing Local. Apparently the LFL people have been unable to keep up with all the new libraries, and have fallen months behind. Their own map is also limited compared to LibraryThing’s robust feature set. And having LFLs in LibraryThing Local would allow LibraryThing members to discover them, as well as users of our Readar iPhone app.

If you don’t know, Little Free Libraries is a grassroots movement sweeping the country and the world. “Stewards” build or buy them, set them up somewhere, often in their front yards, and fill them with books. Visitors take and leave books as they wish. BookCrossing, around since 2001(!), is a similar concept, encouraging and tracking the free exchange of books from reader to reader. Books can be released “into the wild” anywhere, but “BookCrossing Zones” (BCZs) are special spaces set up to facilitate this exchange.

We’ve discussed similar efforts before, and approached both organizations for a feed, without success. We’d love to work with either or both, and will (of course) share our data. But we’re not going to wait. We want people to know about these great projects, and all the other informal sharing libraries out there. So we jumped in. Before releasing it, we had our “Board for Extreme Thing Advances” group to work on it, and they added almost 700 venues, and worked out all the conventions we needed.

Little Free Libraries in Connecticut

New features

How do I add venues?

If you’re interested in adding Little Libraries, here are some resources:

Little Free Libraries

  • Members have set up a Wiki Page, recording what states and countries have already been entered, and which haven’t
  • Check out the discussion topic, where members hash out conventions and trade tips

BookCrossing Zones

We’re still figuring out how to find and add all official and unofficial zones. If you’re interested, join the conversation.

Other libraries

“Little Libraries” is for small collections of every type, not just book exchanges. The Dutch projects MiniBieb and Boekspots are closely analogous to Little Free Libraries, so they fit. But, as I’ve written before, cities and towns throughout the world are filled with such collections, from coffee shops to churches, from community centers to advocacy groups. At present we’re focusing on fully “public” venues, but the many types available to choose from means it can all go in, with suitable filters for what you want and what you don’t want.

Come Talk about this project.

Labels: librarything local, local books, member projects, new feature, new features

Wednesday, October 16th, 2013

AllHallowsThing Contest!

To celebrate Halloween, LibraryThing is introducing a brand new competition, “All HallowsThing.” It could help you decorate for the big night, or even inspire that costume you are worrying about!

How to enter

  1. Choose one of the two competition categories, or submit to both.
    • Literary Costume: Dress as a character or object from your favorite book.
    • Pumpkin Creations: Make a literary pumpkin!
  2. Take photos of your costume/pumpkins.
  3. Upload your photos to your gallery.
  4. Be sure to tag your photos. Tag them AllHallowsThing2013.
  5. Go ahead and add a title, description or whatever, detailing how you made your costume/creation.
  6. Deadline: The deadline is by 6 pm, Eastern on November 8th to be considered for our fabulous prizes!

Winners get

The staff at LibraryThing will choose the winners of each category.

Grand Prize: One per category

Runners Up: Two per category

  • Your choice of a LibraryThing t-shirt, stamp, or CueCat
  • That secret, undisclosed LibraryThing gift we haven’t announced yet
  • A lifetime gift membership

Fine Print: You can enter as many times as you like, but you can only win one prize. By entering the contest you certify that your creation is your own. All decisions as to winners will be made by LibraryThing staff, and our decisions are final, damn it. LibraryThing staff and family can enter, but can only be honored as prize-less honorable mentions. We reserve the right to use your photo, but the copyright remains yours. You can release them under a copyleft license.

Questions? Post links and question on this Talk topic.

Labels: AllHallowsThing, contest, contests