TinyCat celebrates its 8th birthday this month, and we want to give a special thank-you to all our members, including the more than 37,000 TinyCat signups since our launch in 2016. Because we’re turning 8 years old and it’s April 8, we’re keeping the theme of eights and running a special LibraryThing Store sale now through Wednesday, May 8!

TinyCat’s Birthday Sale puts all TinyCat merch, library supplies, and holiday bundles (while supplies last) on major discount for the next month. Come and stock up on gorgeous enamel pins, laptop stickers, printed barcode labels, and more.

As always, we want to thank everyone who’s joined TinyCat to share and manage their library online over the last 8 years, and we can’t wait to see where the next year takes us. Come and share your own birthday messages on Talk, and let us know what other new features you hope for next!

Don’t forget to visit the LibraryThing Store by Wednesday, May 8, to take advantage of the deals while you can: https://www.librarything.com/more/store

It’s TinyCat‘s 7th birthday!

We started giving small libraries the best, most user-friendly and affordable library management solution—all powered by LibraryThing—back in 2016. With over 31,000 signups, we’re proud to help schools and classrooms, churches, game clubs, human rights groups, nonprofits, and so many other organizations with their lending libraries. (You can check out some of our featured Libraries of the Month on the blog.)

We look forward to continuing TinyCat’s growth with new features and improvements on both LibraryThing and TinyCat. Our latest developments on LibraryThing, on top of our “LT2” design upgrades, include spot-on New Recommendations and the ChatGPT-engineered “AI Search“. We’ve also been making lots of little tweaks and improvements to TinyCat this year with our newest developer @rebeccaamax, including a big feature that allows you to add multiple Admin Users to TinyCat.

To give you all our thanks during TinyCat’s birthday celebration, we have a couple of treats for you:

Store Sale

For the next month until Friday, May 5, we’re running a major sale on all of our CueCat scanners, barcode labels, and TinyCat merch in the LibraryThing Store.

Be sure to take advantage of the deals and stock up this month while you can: https://www.librarything.com/more/store.

“Books & Cats” TinyCat Giveaway

To celebrate 7 years, we’re giving away 7 prizes to our TinyCat members! 6 of our 7 winners—all chosen at random—will have the choice to receive a free set of TinyCat/LibraryThing coasters or a free TinyCat pin. The grand prize winner will receive our very last, organic-cotton, TinyCat tote bag in stock (pictured right), perfect for all of the book hauls and beach gear this summer.

Here’s how to enter the “Books & Cats” TinyCat Giveaway:

• Give us your books & cats! Post a “shelfie”—a picture of your favorite bookshelf in your library—or a picture of your cat/s (we will accept other fur babies).
• Post your pics in the TinyCat Group on this Talk thread, or tag @TinyCat_lib in a post on Twitter: just be sure to include a link to your TinyCat library too.
• The deadline to enter your “Books & Cats” post is Friday, May 5 (23:59:00 EDT).
• Want a bonus entry? Post a photo or two with your books AND cats (or fur babies).

Giveaway winners will be selected and notified the week of May 8. Best of luck, and thanks for another great year with TinyCat!

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.