Friday, September 18th, 2009

LibraryThing, IndieBound and love

As Tim blogged last night, we needed some help from members to link LibraryThing data on bookstores to IndieBound data. We connected 1,200 automatically, but that left 1,362 that had to be done manually—checking exact names, addresses, sometimes even creating a new “venue” on LibraryThing Local.

Tim posted the plea for help at about 5:30 pm last night. By 11 am this morning, it was entirely done. That’s right, in less than eighteen hours—most of which were in the middle of the night, in the US at least—LibraryThing members completed the task. That’s incredible. Insane. Fantastic.

As Tim tweeted, “IndieBound/LT demonstrates what I believe: Independent bookstores can win online if they engage the community. Love is powerful.” His sentiments were retweeted all over, and the IndieBound folks agreed. (See IndieBoundPaige, mattsupko, SarahABA on Twitter)

LibraryThing members are indeed an incredible community, and love indeed is powerful.* We’re going to add a new helper badge to recognize these folks. Thank you, thank you.

*Anyone who hasn’t seen Clay Shirky’s “The Internet Runs on Love” talk, should (blogged

Labels: bookstore integration, indiebound, love

5 Comments:

  1. Ed says:

    Sheesh, while I was just trying to understand what was needed, it all got done! Remarkable.

  2. Kevin Ashley says:

    It's partly the love. And it's partly because you made it insanely easy to do. For a quick hack, that was a really nice interface.

  3. Tim says:

    "For a quick hack, that was a really nice interface."

    Thanks!

  4. Kevin Ashley says:

    Sorry, I didn't put that well. It was a good interface, full stop.

  5. esta1923 says:

    Thank you for sending me to the Cllay Shirky talk. I hope others will see it too.

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