Saturday, March 25th, 2006

Public Library Asssociation / 3 million tags

Three million tags. After getting the smack-down for daring to suggest (even in fun) that LibraryThing, with two million books, was now the 182th-largest library in the United States, I hesitate to proclaim that LibraryThing has more tags than any library in the world!

PLA. I managed to sneak down to Boston to catch the end of the Public Library Association’s 2006 conference. (A tip of the hat to my “connection,” who saw that I didn’t pay the full rate for what amounted to 1 1/2 hours of attendance and a Diet Pepsi.) Although I stupidly left my beautiful bookmark business cards at home, I managed to mention LibraryThing to a bunch of people. Nine in ten had never heard of it, but one in ten’s eyes lit up and they got effusive—a great sign, I think. I gave a well-received product demo to a library OPAC supplier. And I picked up information on getting some real-live LibraryThing library cards, which would be fun, if totally useless, I think. Were any other Thingamabrarians there?

Super-librarian Nancy Pearl talked at the PLA, but on Wednesday, so she dodged an abject plea for a NPR story on LibraryThing. Fortunately, I have the life-like Librarian Action Figure (“With Amazing Push-Button Shushing Action!”*), modeled directly after Ms. Pearl.

Nancy, if you’re reading this, does the word voodoo have any meaning for you?

*My wife got me her action figure under the false impression that it actually made shushing noises, or at least moved its “Shushing Action” under battery power, but it just sits there and you have to do both the shushing and the motion. Hey, what gives?

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