Archive for November, 2018

Friday, November 30th, 2018

5th Annual LibraryThing Holiday Card Exchange

cardexchange-fullOur 5th annual LibraryThing Holiday Card Exchange is here! Inspired by ALA Think Tank and Reddit, previous years have brought holiday cheer to many, so we’re doing it again!

The idea is simple:

  • Mail a Holiday card to a random LibraryThing member.
  • You’ll get one from another member. Only that member will see your address.*
  • You can mail a hand-made or store card. Add a note to personalize it.

Sign-up closes Friday, December 7th at 5:00 PM EST. We’ll inform you of your matches within an hour or so. Send your cards out soon after.

» Sign up for the LibrayThing Holiday Card Exchange

Questions? Join the discussion on Talk

* In order for the cards you receive to be addressed to your real name, you must include your name in the address box.

Labels: card exchange, events, fun, holiday

Monday, November 26th, 2018

LibraryThing’s Holiday Store and New Coasters

holidaystore

holidaystore_collage2

Holiday Store Sale

LibraryThing’s annual Holiday Store is here! If SantaThing (signups close this Wednesday, November 28th, 12pm EST) and the Holiday Card Exchange (details coming soon) aren’t enough to spark your holiday spirit, our generous Holiday Store Sale ought to help.

Highlights: we’re selling CueCat scanners for just $5 apiece and all tees for just $7*. Be sure to check out our favorite, organic-cotton LibraryThing and TinyCat tote bags, American-made book stamps, and more. The Holiday Store is running now through Epiphany**—here.

New LibraryThing/TinyCat Coasters

We’ve just added adorable, dual-sided LibraryThing/TinyCat coasters (image left, center) to our Store. Made of thick, 60pt pulpboard and sold in sets of 4, these coasters make the perfect add-on or stocking stuffer for any book lover in your family. Be sure to treat yourself, too—you can dress up any beverage of choice with the classic LibraryThing “L” logo, or the always adorable TinyCat. Coaster sets are just $2 through Epiphany, and only $3 thereafter*.

You can post any questions about the Holiday Store on Talk, and to let us know what you think of our new coasters. Be sure to visit LibraryThing’s Holiday Store and stock up on your holiday shopping before we run out!


*Prices do not include cost of shipping. Shipping is included on Store pages.

**Epiphany is also known as Little Christmas, the night before Orthodox Christmas or the day after the Twelfth day of Christmas—and doesn’t your loved one deserve twelve LibraryThing t-shirts?

Labels: barcode scanners, cuecats, events, holiday, sale, teeshirts, tshirts

Wednesday, November 21st, 2018

TinyCat’s November Library of the Month: America’s Test Kitchen

To read more about TinyCat’s Library of the Month feature, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we couldn’t help but feature one of the most appetizing libraries we know of. We’re thrilled to feature America’s Test Kitchen Library as TinyCat’s Library of the Month! Library Intern Kelly Potter was kind enough to take my interview questions this month:

First, what is your library, and what is your mission—your “raison d’être”?

We’re a rapidly expanding independent media company that has earned the respect of the publishing industry, the culinary world, and most importantly, millions of home cooks (just ask the best cooks you know).

We are passionate about cooking—discovering why recipes work and why they don’t—and sharing what we learn to help everyone cook with confidence. We test cookware and supermarket ingredients to find the best quality products for home cooks. We don’t accept advertising.

Tell us some interesting ways you support your community.

Research development starts at the library. I help our test cooks and interns research recipes and culinary history. I have multiple projects occurring simultaneously. We have two magazines, Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country as well as recipe development for the books. It is satisfactory to see how the recipes come out. Some recipes take a few short months to develop, while others have taken years.

That’s impressive! With R&D starting at the library, what are some of your favorite items in your collection?

We have every book published by America’s Test Kitchen. It is interesting to look at the collection to see how the company has transformed and evolved. Cook’s Illustrated celebrated their 25th Anniversary this year and for the first time started publishing the magazine in full color. We also have Good Housekeeping magazines from the 1940’s and those are very cool to look at.

What’s a particular challenge you experience, as a small library?

I am a graduate student at Simmons University and there have been other interns who maintained and cataloged our collection before me. I have been looking through the collection deleting multiple records of the same item, which has been easy to do with LibraryThing.

What’s your favorite thing about TinyCat? Anything you’d love to add?

TinyCat is easy to use. I have test cooks who can come into the library when I am not there and be able to locate the books they need. As a student and intern, I am still learning all the different facets and capabilities of TinyCat.


Want to learn more about America’s Test Kitchen? Visit their website here, or check out their library on TinyCat.

To read up on TinyCat’s previous Libraries of the Month, visit the TinyCat Post archive here.

Calling all TinyCat libraries: become TinyCat’s next Library of the Month—just send us a Tweet @TinyCat_lib or email Kristi at kristi@librarything.com.

Labels: libraries, Library of the Month, TinyCat

Monday, November 19th, 2018

SantaThing for Litsy Members

SANTATHING_2018-Litsy

Every year LibraryThing members participate in “SantaThing,” our Secret Santa for book lovers.

This year we’re inviting Littens to join in!

The idea is simple: You sign up and pay $15–50 and choose your favorite bookstore. We match you with someone to pick books for, and someone else will pick books for you. We try to match people with similar reading tastes, and members help each other out with suggestions. LibraryThing staff does all the ordering and everyone gets surprise books for the holidays!

LibraryThing/Litsy takes no cut: this is a community project, not a money-maker. And it’s a lot of fun.

The first 20 Littens to sign up for SantaThing will get a free Litsy mug!(1) Mugs will be coming to the LibraryThing store soon. But you’ll get them first of anyone.

To participate:

Wait, what? Link your account? Yes. You can now link a Litsy and LibraryThing account. At present, it does almost nothing but enable SantaThing and give you a web page that summarizes some of your Litsy reading. It will do more soon!

Questions about SantaThing? You might find this post about SantaThing helpful.

Hoping to see you in SantaThing this year,
Tim, Loranne and the Litsy/LibraryThing Team


1. We’re defining Litsy members as members who posted to Litsy at least once in the last 14 days—this to favor regular Litsy members, not LibraryThing members who signed up for Litsy once upon a time. If there aren’t enough of these, we’ll open it to any Litsy member.

Labels: events, fun, holiday, Litsy, santathing

Friday, November 16th, 2018

Feature Update: Sharing to Facebook

Sharing your reviews, book adds, and other LibraryThing activity got an update! To test it out head over to Your Feed and click the “Share this” link next to the action you’d like to share.

Here’s what a posted review looks like today.

The long version

In August, Facebook ended its old publishing actions API, meaning websites (like LibraryThing) that had built out features for sharing directly to Facebook had to rebuild those features from the ground up. Some sites and services, such as Twitter, simply disabled this feature.

Those of you following along on the bug report might remember that we temporarily disabled our share to Facebook feature, too. LibraryThing’s developers (especially Chris C.) spent the last couple months rebuilding our Facebook sharing capability.

How to use it

Sign in to LibraryThing and go to Your Feed by clicking the “Share” link in the upper right corner of any page. Or post or update a book review, and tick the “Facebook” box next to “Share on” before hitting “Save review.”

If you’re not already logged into Facebook, you’ll be prompted to sign in, otherwise, you’ll see your post draft appear right away.

Posting a review links directly to the reviews page, with yours appearing at the top. Sharing a book you’ve added will link to your unique book page.

What’s new?

Review text: previously, we were unable to pull the text of members’ reviews into the body of the post itself. The link showed a snippet of your review (and it still does), but your rating and the full text wouldn’t be visible. We’ve fixed that. You can opt to show that rating and review text (like the screenshot above), or click the ‘x’ while composing your post to show only the link and snippet, like so.

Linked accounts

Linking your LibraryThing and Facebook accounts is no longer required to share things to Facebook. This feature is still useful for finding Facebook friends (see Friend Finder below) who are also on LibraryThing, but it has no effect on whether or what you can share from LibraryThing to Facebook.

You can still link or un-link your accounts here.

Friend Finder

Find out which of your Facebook and/or Twitter friends are on LibraryThing, too! Use the Friend Finder to see your friends on LibraryThing, and send invites to those who aren’t.

What’s next?

We’re still working on improving the cover images that display with sharing book adds.

We also want to hear from you—try it out, and tell us what you think on Talk.

Labels: facebook, features

Wednesday, November 14th, 2018

SantaThing 2018: Bookish Secret Santa!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: the twelfth annual SantaThing is here at last!

What’s SantaThing? SantaThing is “Secret Santa” for LibraryThing members.

Done this before?

» SIGN UP FOR SANTATHING NOW!

HOW IT WORKS

You pay into the SantaThing system (between $15–$50), and pick your favorite bookseller. We match you with a LibraryThing member, and you play Santa by selecting books for them. Another Santa does the same for you, in secret. LibraryThing does the ordering, and you get the joy of giving AND receiving books!

Sign up once or thrice, for yourself or someone else.

Even if you don’t want to be a Santa, you can help by suggesting books for others. Click on an existing SantaThing profile to leave a suggestion.

Every year, LibraryThing members give generously to each other through SantaThing. If you’d like to donate an entry, or want to participate, but it’s just not in the budget this year, be sure to check out our Donations Thread, run once again by our fantastic volunteer member, mellymel1713278.

IMPORTANT DATES

Sign-ups close WEDNESDAY, November 28th at 12pm EST. By Wednesday evening, we’ll notify you via profile comment who your Santee is, and you can start picking books.

You’ll then have a week to pick your books, until THURSDAY, December 6th at 12pm EST. As soon as the picking ends, the ordering begins, and we’ll get all the books out to you as soon as we can.

» Go sign up to become a Secret Santa now!

WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR?

Every year we tweak SantaThing a little. This year, we’re thrilled to be partnering with Print as our official local SantaThing store once again. Print is a great indie bookstore located in Portland, ME (not far from LibraryThing HQ!). Other new additions: Amazon.de has expanded their free shipping options, which is good news for all. Sadly, Audible still doesn’t allow for the gifting of individual audiobooks. I know that was a big disappointment last year. If you’d like audiobooks, be sure to say so in your SantaThing profile, and your Secret Santa can select CD copies of those from your store of choice.

Just like last year, the Kindle option is available to all members, regardless of location. So long as your Kindle is registered on Amazon.com (not .co.uk, .ca, etc.), you can elect to receive your SantaThing gifts as Kindle ebooks. See more information about Kindle and SantaThing here.

SHIPPING

Some of our booksellers are able to offer free shipping, and some are not. Depending on your bookseller of choice, you may receive $5 less in books, to cover shipping costs. You can find details about shipping costs and holiday ordering deadlines for each of our booksellers here on the SantaThing Help page.

Go sign up now!

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS?

This is our TWELFTH year of SantaThing. See the SantaThing Help page further details and FAQ.

Feel free to ask your questions over on this Talk topic, or you can contact Loranne directly at loranne@librarything.com.

Happy SantaThinging!

Labels: events, fun, holiday, santathing

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

November 2018 Early Reviewers

Win free books from the November 2018 batch of Early Reviewer titles! This month we’ve got 100 titles, and a grand total of 4,530 copies to give out.

Which books are you hoping to snag this month? Come tell us on Talk.

If you haven’t already, sign up for Early Reviewers. If you’ve already signed up, please check your mailing/email address and make sure they’re correct.

» Request books here!

The deadline to request a copy is Monday, November 26th at 6pm Eastern.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, France, and many more. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Akashic Books Tundra Books Candlewick Entertainment
Black Rose Writing World Weaver Press Harper Perennial
Henry Holt and Company Scribe Publications Revell
Graphic Arts Books Canongate Books RELIANCE BOOKS
Icon Books Success Full Press William Morrow
Transformation Media Books John Ott Ballantine Books
Pacific Boulevard Books Consortium Book Sales and Distribution Oneworld Publications
Beacon Press Prufrock Press Candlewick Press
Provisioners Press Unsolicited Press Tantor Media
HighBridge Audio CarTech Books Tule Publishing
City Owl Press Literary Wanderlust LLC EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Fifth Element Press Open Books NewCon Press
Heritage Books Dr. Cicero Books Fireship Press
Hot Tree Publishing Kamel Press Goldenjay Books
Common Deer Press Saborn Press Old Crow Publishing
BHC Press Prodigy Gold Books

Labels: early reviewers, LTER