Monday, October 4th, 2010

Author gallery updated

I’ve reworked the author gallery (see yours or LibraryThing’s) to use the new image system.

The author gallery shows pictures for all your authors who have one, and lists the ones that don’t. You can also see the most popular authors on LibraryThing the same way.

Images have recently undergone a change a licensing. After considerable debate, a large majority of members (208/26) agreed with my plan to shift away from member-moderation of image copyright to the more common pattern of relying on the instruments and protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The upshot is that while LibraryThing, like all websites, still prohibits uploading copyrighted content without permission, members are no longer encouraged to flag and remove images for copyright reasons on their own authority. If I have time, I’ll write up a longer blog post about the change, on Thingology.

Labels: authors

5 Comments:

  1. lorax says:

    There are a number of authors in the “Without pictures” gallery (http://www.librarything.com/authorgallery/all/none ) that do actually have pictures. (The first two I checked were Charles Dickens and Douglas Adams; checking a few more, I only found one out of the ten I checked who didn’t have a picture.) Is it not picking up on images that were entered using the old system, perhaps?

  2. Paul Meyer says:

    That’s great – thanks. Is there a way to view the authors’ pic within specific collections (not for all my books at once)?

  3. Jack says:

    How can I post or send in an image of an author? I’m related to David Lavender, the western Americana historian and he has no image here. Thanks, Jack

  4. Mary says:

    I would also like to know how to post/send in the image of an author. I seem to have more authors without images than with.

  5. Randy Orrison says:

    Tim, are you aware of the Righthaven issue? “The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits” (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/)

    For those looking for the way to upload author pictures, go to the author page (e.g. http://www.librarything.com/author/lavenderdavidsievert) and click on the “Add a picture” link on the right.

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