Archive for the ‘reviews’ Category

Tuesday, September 10th, 2013

Show off your reviews in Facebook

Our new LTFL Reviews Facebook Pagetab feature lets you display recent reviews that have been written in your catalog right in Facebook—where your patrons are. This is a free update to any library that subscribes to our Reviews Enhancement. Make the most out of the reviews your patrons are writing and proudly show them off!

You can set it to show all recent reviews, or filter by category—show just the “staff picks” or “back to school” category you might have set up.

LibraryThing for Libraries Reviews Enhancement is a great addition to your library catalog—letting patrons rate and review right within your OPAC. You can also share reviews with hundreds of other libraries that use the service, as well as draw from over a million hand-vetted user reviews written by LibraryThing.com members.

The Reviews Facebook Pagetab feature dovetails nicely with the last feature we added: social media integration—allowing patrons to sign in with and post their reviews to Facebook and Twitter.

More: Reviews Blog Widget

a reviews blog widget

While we’re on the subject of showing off reviews, the Reviews Enhancement also comes with a reviews blog widget, which lets you display new reviews anywhere (not just on Facebook!). Try adding a widget to your library’s homepage or blog to highlight the activity in your catalog. See for example the homepage of the Cass District Library, the blog of City of Hayward Public Library, or how the City of Port Phillip Library shows off “recent reviews from our catalogue.” Like the Facebook Pagetab, this feature also comes free with a subscription to the Reviews Enhancement!

Instructions on creating reviews widgets are here.

How to get Reviews in Facebook

If your library currently subscribes to the Reviews Enhancement, it’s quite easy to bring reviews into Facebook. Instructions to get started are here.

If you don’t yet subscribe to Reviews, just let me know if you’d be interested in a free trial! (email abby@librarything.com).

Labels: book reviews, facebook, librarything for libraries, LTFL, LTFL Reviews, new features, reviews, social media, social networking

posted by Abby @2:03 pm 0 Comments »
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    • Monday, April 8th, 2013

    Reviews Enhancement with Social Media Integration

    We are very pleased to announce an upgrade to our LibraryThing for Libraries Reviews Enhancement—social media integration.

    The Reviews Enhancement lets your patrons rate and review items directly within your catalog. But it also comes loaded with reviews to start! You can share reviews with over 200 libraries who also use the service and draw from over 950,000 hand-vetted user reviews written by LibraryThing.com members. But we’re constantly improving, and we’ve just released the following new features!

    Social media integration

    • Sign in with Facebook or Twitter. Your patrons can now login to write reviews in your catalog using their Facebook or Twitter accounts, or they can continue to use the “reviews account” as usual. They will also be able to link an existing reviews account to their Twitter or Facebook login, for easy access in the future. (Simply log into an existing reviews account, click to account settings, and then connect.)
    • Post reviews to Facebook and Twitter. Once a patron’s reviews account is linked, they also have the ability to tweet the review they just wrote in your catalog, and to post it to Facebook. This is great for everyone. The patron gets to show their friends what they’re reading at the library they love—and your library gets fantastic visibility!

    The links from Facebook and Twitter drive people back into your catalog, to discover even more of your collection.

    Rating without reviewing

    Just to sweeten the pot, we’ve added one more feature in here: the ability to rate a book with stars without having to write a review. Some people prefer to just rate, and we’ve made that possible.

    How to get it

    If your library currently subscribes to the Reviews Enhancement, and you want to make sure your patrons can take advantage of these improvements, you have to do… nothing, unless you want to turn social media integration off! If you’d like to disable this, just log into your LibraryThing for Libraries admin account, and go to the Configuration > Reviews page. At the bottom, you’ll see an option to disable social media integration. Toggle that, and the ability to sign in with and post to Twitter and Facebook will disappear from your catalog.

    Learn more. If you’d like to subscribe to Review Enhancements, get a free trial, or just learn more: Email me (abby@librarything.com). To subscribe, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

    Come see us at CIL. Tim and I (Abby) are at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington DC this week—stop by the exhibit hall to see us!

    Labels: facebook, librarything for libraries, LTFL, reviews, social media, twitter

    posted by Abby @10:22 am 0 Comments »
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    • Thursday, November 8th, 2012

    “The Casual Vacancy” Review contest winners!

    Drum roll please … I’m happy to announce the winners of the review contest for J.K. Rowling’s new novel, The Casual Vacancy.

    As promised the top three reviews (those with the most “thumbs-up” when the contest closed) win a $50 gift card to Amazon, Abebooks, Booksense, or any independent bookseller of their choice, a LibraryThing t-shirt and a lifetime membership (to keep or give away).

    The top three are:

    Seven runners up* (the next seven reviews with the most “thumbs-up”) win a LibraryThing t-shirt and a free lifetime membership (to keep or give away).

    We didn’t have forty additional reviewers who both wrote a review and voted for others’ reviews, so everyone who did that will each receive a year’s free membership (to keep or give away).

    Congratulations to everyone who participated! If you won a membership: I’ve upgraded your own if you weren’t already a lifetime or annual member; otherwise, go here to send your gift membership. For winners of the top prizes, I’ll be sending you a profile comment shortly!

    You can read all the reviews here.

    * I was actually shocked to find myself as the “first runner-up” (you can read my review here if you like). As per the rules, I am thus a “prize-less runner-up.”

    Labels: contests, reviews

    posted by Jeremy @1:36 pm 1 Comment »
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    • Thursday, September 27th, 2012

    “The Casual Vacancy” Review Contest

    J.K. Rowling’s new novel, The Casual Vacancy, hits shelves (and mailboxes) today, and I’m going to bet it doesn’t take very long at all before the LibraryThing reviews start appearing.

    We figured it was a good time to have another review contest! We did this before when Breaking Dawn and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, and it was great fun.

    The prizes:

    That’s right, there will be FIFTY winners.

    How the winners will be chosen:

    • The top three reviews—with the most thumbs-up—will get the big prize. The next seven will get the next prize.
    • The remaining forty winners will be randomly picked from all members who both wrote a review and voted for others’ reviews.

    So, when you finish reading, get writing! When you’re done writing, take some time to read other reviews, and give the thumbs-up to the ones you think deserve it.

    The contest ends on Friday, October 19th Tuesday, October 30th. Have fun!

    We’re also assembling the published reviews for The Casual Vacancy as they roll in. See this thread for discussion. Warning: don’t read these reviews if you don’t want to see spoilers.

    Fine Print: The review you post must be your review (as per the Terms of Use). LibraryThing staff and family can enter, but can only be honored as prize-less runners-up.

    Labels: contests, reviews

    posted by Jeremy @9:15 am 13 Comments »
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    • Friday, July 3rd, 2009

    Twitter your reviews

    We’ve added a feature to make it easy to Twitter (or Tweet) your reviews.

    You’ll see the option—a tiny Twitter logo—on your reviews. When you click it, it takes you to Twitter and fills in the message box. You can, of course, edit it however you like.

    You can spot most such tweets with this Twitter search.

    This is our second Twitter-based feature. The other is an easy way to Twitter your books to LibraryThing, handy for making a note of a book when you’re in a bookstore or library. Like that, the Twitter your review feature is all about restraint and options. We’ve rejected the idea—popular among book and non-book sites—of automating that process, of making it easy to machine-gun all your friends and followers with trivial updates.

    Are you on Twitter? Follow us. Most LibraryThing-related news comes from my account, LibraryThingTim. The LThing account is for incoming messages mostly. John, Chris and Luke are also on, discussing LibraryThing’s irrationally vague vacation policy.

    Labels: book reviews, new feature, new features, reviews, twitter

    posted by Tim @12:59 am 12 Comments »
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