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Thursday, September 10th, 2015

Cover Improvements!

As we’ve hinted, we’ve made some big changes to covers on LibraryThing recently. There are more covers to choose from than ever, and we’re excited to show you what’s new!

1. All of the Covers from Amazon

No, really, all of them. LibraryThing now shows all Amazon covers for your books and other media—this includes covers for books with ASINs (and no ISBNs). So many of your ebooks, CDs and DVDs now have Amazon covers available to use.

You can also see stats on your cover usage—where your covers come from, and how many of them you’re using from various sources. To see where your covers are coming from, check out the Book Covers section of Stats/Memes.

2. Change your cover, keep your ISBN

Changing the cover for one of your books to a different Amazon cover no longer forces you to change the ISBN of your book. You’ll still have the option to switch ISBNs if you like, but it’s no longer required. When switching to a new Amazon cover that’s associated with a different ISBN, you’ll see the dialog box pictured at right, with a check box to indicate whether you’d like to change your ISBN, too.

3. Cover Flagging

Members have long been able to flag cover images that are not valid covers for a given work, by voting “yes” or “no” on an individual cover. Now those flags really matter—covers with enough flags can’t be chosen as the main cover for a work. Like this picture of some seals on a beach, which is definitely not a cover.*

To try it out, select a cover image, click the “Information” magnifying glass, and then click the “Flag this cover” link in the detail box that pops up.

UPDATE: I FORGOT TO ADD!

4. Real fake covers
Lastly, works without covers are now showing the title on the fake cover. See example, example, example. Or see the image to the right.

The trick is, the words aren’t superimposed on the covers. We’re actually making images that include the words on the covers. This is a neat trick, allowing us to produce “fake” covers at any size we want, wherever we want–on any page, inside or outside of LibraryThing.

So far this technology is only on work pages. It’ll be spreading elsewhere soon.

Questions? Comments?

Any questions or trouble with new covers? Come join the discussion on Talk.

* Covers will be flagged down if:

Vote “yes” totals at least 4.
Vote “yes” totals at least 3x vote “no”.

Labels: covers, new features

Wednesday, June 24th, 2015

Sneak Peek: TinyCat for Small Libraries

We’ve done a lot of hinting about unveiling some big news at ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco this week, and now, we’re giving you a sneak peek… at TinyCat.

What is TinyCat? TinyCat turns LibraryThing into a powerful, simple, online catalog for so-called “tiny libraries” (less than 20,000 titles).

These smallest libraries—churches, synagogues, small schools, community centers, academic departments, etc.—have been using LibraryThing to catalog their collections for almost a decade. That continues with TinyCat. TinyCat offers a new way to view the catalog that’s cleaner and focused on helping patrons find and discover books in your library.(1)

TinyCat is:

Simple. TinyCat is simple and clean. Faceted searching adds power.
Mobile. TinyCat looks and works great on every device and platform.
Flexible. TinyCat supports all media types, not just the books that drive LibraryThing.
Professional. Import and export MARC records. Track patrons and show item status.
Secure. HTTPS always.
Enhanced. TinyCat includes the best, most useful enhancements LibraryThing can offer—more than almost any “big-library” catalog has.

Screenshots (click images for large size)

Method to our madness? It’s no coincidence that we’ve been rolling out lots of new features lately, many of which have been necessary to make TinyCat possible (think Barcode Support, Circulation, Advanced Search and now New Feature: MARC Import). There’s still more to come. We couldn’t be more excited.

TinyCat is coming soon. (We were aiming for ALA, so it’s very close.)

See us at ALA. Stop by booth 3634 at ALA Annual this weekend in San Francisco to talk to Tim and Abby and see TinyCat live. (We’ll show it with your collection, if you have one.)

If you need a free pass to the exhibit hall, details are in this blog post.

Interested? If you’re a librarian of a small library who might be interested in beta testing TinyCat, get in touch! Drop us an email at info@librarything.com.

1. In library terms, TinyCat is the OPAC (“Online Public Access Catalog”), and LibraryThing is the ILS (“Integrated Library System.”)

Labels: new feature, new features, small libraries, TinyCat

Wednesday, June 24th, 2015

New Feature: MARC Import

This is not a bobcat

MARC is the library standard for bibliographic records. We’ve always parsed MARC records behind the scenes, when members searched one of our 700 library sources, or our Overcat collection. A few years ago, we introduced the ability export your LibraryThing collections as MARC records, even if your records didn’t start out in MARC.

Now, we’re adding the last piece: MARC importing, for all the small but professionally-cataloged libraries that use LibraryThing.

Try it Out. Check it out on Import or directly to MARC Import.

How it works. To use MARC import, you’ll need to have your library data in a .marc file format. Depending on how large a file you’ve got, the import process may take a few minutes. The good news is, you’ll receive a notification from LibraryThing once it’s ready. From there, you’ll be able to review your import options—just like you would with any other import—and select the collections, tags, etc. you’d like to apply to the items you’re importing.

What is MARC? MARC stands for Machine-Readable Cataloging. It represents a set of digital formats for describing items held by libraries: books, maps, CDs/DVDs, etc. You name it, if it’s in a library, MARC can handle it. Libraries the world over use MARC to standardize their item records in such a way that information about different types of items can all be fed into (and retrieved from) cataloging systems uniformly.

MARC fields are denoted by numerical tags, that indicate what type of information is contained in that field. For example, the title of a given work is always in field 245.

Don’t Upload The New York Public Library! This is for small—or, better the tiny—libraries that use MARC records and LibraryThing. Uploads are capped at 10,000 records total, so don’t try to upload 100,000 records. “Regular” libraries, big and small, should check out LibraryThing for Libraries, a remarkable suite of catalog enhancements.

Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think on Talk.

Labels: cataloging, new features, small libraries

Thursday, June 18th, 2015

New: Printed Library Barcode Labels

Keep track of your books like a pro.

Yesterday we released our new Barcode support feature along with our new Take Inventory feature for Your Books. Good things come in threes, so today we bring you a new product to our Store lineup—printed barcodes!

Why barcodes? Barcodes are for tiny libraries and private individuals who want to keep better track of their books. Slap a barcode on a book and you’ve got a readable, scannable, unique number forever. Once its got a number, you can do inventory and lend books the right way.

For regular users, a small barcode, on the back cover or inside, is an excellent way to know when you’ve cataloged a book and when you haven’t.(1) Users who want to do inventory can add them to all their books, or just to the ones without scannable back-cover ISBNs.

Where do I get them? You can order your own custom barcodes right here in our Store:

LibraryThing Store > Printed barcodes

Price

We’re charging $10.00 for the first 500 labels, and $5.00 for each additional set of 500.
That’s 20-25% of what traditional vendors, like Follett, charge.(2)
No really, this is a steal!

Other details

Quality. Our labels are acid-free, premium stock for archival use. They have a pH-neutral, permanent, pressure-sensitive adhesive.
Size. The labels are 1 1/4 x 5/8 inches. That’s small enough to be visually inconspicuous, but it fits numbers up to 100,000 easily. They come in sheets of 100 (102, actually, because math).
Symbology. We chose Code 39, perhaps the most common library barcode format. The codes also include the number, written out, in case the barcode won’t scan.
Customization. You can add your own text above the code, such as your name or LibraryThing ID (up to 25 characters). You can also add a tiny LibraryThing icon ( ) before your text. Or you can go for barcode-only labels.
CueCat Support? The LibraryThing barcodes work great with LibraryThing’s super-cheap CueCat scanners. LibraryThing search and Take Inventory features even read unmodified CueCat codes.

Go ahead and check it out.

You can read more about using barcodes in Your Books here. And of course join our discussion on Talk!

Here are some more photos:

1. Other members use our stamp or mini-stamp.
2. Comparable barcodes cost about that much. In fairness, however, if you spend even more from these companies you can get more durable barcodes, intended for high-circulation public collections.

Labels: barcodes, new feature, new features, small libraries

Wednesday, June 17th, 2015

New Feature: Barcode support

Keep track of your books like a pro.

Two big features in one day? Yup. And we’ll have a big product announcement tomorrow!

Short version. We’ve just added barcode support for your books, and a barcode settings page. If your books are already barcoded, or if you want to add barcodes, this is the feature for you.

Long version. In a few short weeks, we’ll be announcing a new feature, specially designed for “tiny” libraries—those small collections found in churches, historical societies, community centers, academic departments, classrooms and so forth.

To prepare for that day, we are releasing another feature that tiny libraries will find useful: comprehensive support for inventory barcodes.

Inventory barcodes go nicely with our other new feature Take Inventory.

Why use barcodes? Besides small collections, barcode inventory may appeal to many regular users. Regular users may not want to barcode every book—scanning the ISBN barcode works great too. But barcode labels make non-ISBN books much easier to inventory.

(Now, “where do I get cheap barcode labels?” I hear you ask. Ask me again tomorrow, will ya?)

Using Barcodes.

To add the barcode field to your catalog, Edit your Display Styles on LibraryThing Settings > Display Styles. “Barcode” (shown below) is under “Physical.”
You’ll also see the barcodes on book-edit pages.
Barcodes come with extensive Barcode Settings.

Editing Barcodes. Editing barcodes in your catalog is as simple as double-clicking. If you’ve elected for sequential numbers, you can click to get the next one. Or just add the barcode you see. There are no rules, except that every barcode must be unique among your books.

Setting the Rules. The rules for barcodes got so large that we gave it it’s own page. You can edit your Barcode settings at LibraryThing Settings > Barcodes.

In addition to settings, you can also bulk-add barcodes on this page (under “Actions”). If you don’t already have barcodes, the easiest thing to do is to add barcodes to your whole collection, then apply the labels to your books one-by-one.

This feature was primarily created by me (TimSpalding). Come and Discuss this feature on Talk.

Labels: barcodes, new feature, new features, small libraries

Wednesday, June 17th, 2015

New Feature: Take Inventory

UPDATE: It’s been a big day here at LibraryThing. We’ve now added barcode support for your catalog. Read below or see the blog post for more info on that.

Take Inventory, the best name we could come up with(1), is designed to help members check their physical collections against their LibraryThing catalog. It can be used to see what books have gone missing, or, because a failed search produces a link to add the book, to check that everything in your library has actually been cataloged.

Here’s where to get it:(2)

Here’s Taking Inventory in action:

Note that clicking the big, colored circles changes the inventory status(3).

The feature is designed for either manual searching or scanning with a barcode scanner, like our CueCats. You can scan either the ISBN barcode or your own barcode, if you’ve turned on the new barcodes feature for your library. The “flow” is such that you can scan books one after another, without touching the keyboard. Scanning a book marks it as “present.”

If you prefer to type in your searches, it assumes that, if one only one book appears, you want that marked as “present.” (If you don’t, you can click the large inventory circle to change it.) If multiple items show up, you’ll have to mark each one manually. If nothing comes up, you can click to go to Add Books and search for it.

Our original plan was to have this feature on a separate page, but having it within the regular catalog, with the ability to change other fields and sort the data differently gives this method particular power. Note that you can add the Inventory column outside of the “Take Inventory” functionality itself.

This feature was programmed by me (TimSpalding). Chris (ConceptDawg) worked out the color-circles interface.

Come discuss the feature on Talk.

1. The choice of name was exceedingly vexing. I asked both librarians and bookstore people on Twitter, and no consensus emerged. Other options included “shelf read,” “shelf check,” “stock check,” “stock take” and even “section report”!
2. Note that we’ve gotten rid of the special and somewhat odd Tags box. Tags can now be found with all the other pages under the menu it formerly touched. We’re still mulling this over.
3. We like the functionality, but we’re not entirely sure everyone will get this. Your thoughts?

Labels: features, new features, small libraries

Thursday, May 14th, 2015

New Feature: Advanced Search

A few months ago we introduced a new search syntax, allowing you to execute complex searches like:

tag: history author: gibbon

We’ve now added a handy, “Advanced Search” feature, more like that offered by many traditional library catalogs.

You can find it in the search options in “Your Books”:

It opens up a box like this:

When you search it converts your advanced search options into the text syntax, so it’s also a way of showing how that works.

Let us know what you think on Talk.

Labels: new feature, new features, search, small libraries

Friday, March 20th, 2015

New Drag and Drop Catalog Style Editing

We’ve updated how you can arrange the fields in your catalog. What was formerly a collection of drop-down menus has been converted to a drag and drop method. Questions or comments? Tell us all about it on Talk.

Test it out and update your catalog styles here!

Here’s what it looks like now:

Details

You’ll still have up to five customizable display styles, A-E as pictured, with a maximum of 14 fields in each style. Now, instead of having to adjust five or six drop-down menus in order to add a field to the middle of a style, or completely rearrange the order in which the fields appear, all you have to do is drag and drop!

You can drag fields over to a style from the collapsible menu on the right side of the page. This menu categorizes various fields according to type/function: “Physical” contains all the options for dimensions of the book, “Classification” features call numbers, Lexile measures, and so on. You can even drag fields from one display style into another, although doing so will remove that field from the original style.

You can reach your Display Style Settings from either the handy little “Settings” button at the top of Your Books, or by clicking the “Settings” that appears in the upper-right corner, just below the site search bar, when you’re signed in and on the LibraryThing home page, or your profile.

Go see it in action and come tell us what you think on Talk!

Labels: new feature, new features, Uncategorized

Thursday, February 26th, 2015

Your Call Number System

I’ve added a feature so members and small libraries can record your own primary call-number system–the one that you actually use, if you use one.

You can then add a new field, “Call number” to your display styles:

You do this here, at Settings > Other settings.

Why do this? Well, a few reasons.

Your styles can include a “Call number” field, which visitors will find easier to understand.
If you set it to Library of Congress (LCC) or Dewey (DDC/MDS), then you can change the “Call number” column and it will change your LCC or DDC.
If you set it to “Personal or custom system” you can add, edit and show your own private call numbers, without bothering to edit another system.
If you set it to one of the many others (Bliss, Cutter Expansive, etc.) you can add your own numbers, and at some point in the future we may be able to improve on that with additional data from library records. If not data, we can at least code the rules for sorting other classifications.

Here are the options. Feel free to suggest others. Note that nothing has been taken away here. You can continue to use DDC, LCC and now a new private call-number system without obstacles.

Come talk about this on Talk.

Labels: new feature, new features, small libraries, Uncategorized

Friday, February 20th, 2015

New Feature: Lending (a.k.a. “Circulation”)

We’ve just released a major new feature: lending tracking, or, as libraries call it, “circulation.”

Why are we doing this?

Regular members have long called for a simple way to track lending. But the strongest calls have come from the many small libraries that use LibraryThing–community centers, classrooms, museums, churches, synagogues, ashrams, health centers, masonic temples, etc. We’ve got a list of some our favorites.

Simple but Strong

Although simple to use, “Lending” was designed to be powerful enough for small libraries. Rather than just a field for a name, it’s a full system, with:

Who checked something out and when
Due dates and “overdue” status
“On hold,” “missing” an custom statuses
Summary information by transaction, status and patron
Control over what status information visitors see

Here’s a video I made explaining it:

If you don’t want to watch the video, or want more information, here it is in text.

Come talk to us about it here on Talk.

Where can I find it?

Members who haven’t changed their catalog display styles will find the “Lending” column on style “B.” To add it to a style, go to “Settings.” (This used to be just a “cog” graphic next to the styles.)

You can find Lending summary information as a mode, together with tags, authors, etc.

Here’s how it looks in the catalog. Double-click to add or change a book’s lending status. Although there are a lot of fields, everything is optional. If you just want to track in/out, with no names or dates or due-dates, that’s fine:

Here’s what lending looks like on book pages–a little “book-pocket” icon () to edit lending status, and, if the book has a status, an area for showing it.