Archive for the ‘party’ Category

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Flash-Mob Cataloging: NCSU took on the Joel Lane House Museum

Another library cataloged in a day, thanks to the Metadata & Cataloging Department at North Carolina State University Libraries. They descended upon the Joel Lane Museum House in Raleigh, NC (museum website, LibraryThing Local page) as their community service outing, to catalog the museum’s collection (here). Not only is the museum the oldest dwelling in Raleigh, but it’s also full of rare books and historical documents. The collection also has works on museum maintenance, gardening, antiques, colonial-period America, the history of North Carolina and Raleigh, and a book entitled “Southern Honor: ethics and behavior in the old South” – which was thusly tagged ‘dueling‘.

To one-up previous LibraryThing Flash Mobs, this particular mob also scanned some covers! As this escalates, what do you think will mobbers be doing – reading every book as they go?

Read more about the day’s adventures from the libloggerazzi:
Circ and Serve
Shovers and Makers
USF Library

While none of the LibraryThing staff were in attendance, we did send a care package of cuecats and teeshirts. There are some New England flash-mobs in the works, which we will personally help rock.

If you’re interested in forming a flash mob for a library near you, check out Tim’s blog post, the How To Flash-Mob with LibraryThing wiki and the Flash Mob Cataloging Talk group.

Labels: flash mob, flash-mob cataloging, NC, NCSU, party

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Flash-Mob Cataloging Party: Rhode Island Audubon Society


It’s time for another cataloging flash-mob*! This time we’re heading to the Audubon Society of Rhode Island to add their small lending collection to LibraryThing.

LibraryThing members can help catalog around 2,000 items at the beautiful Powder Mill Ledges Wildlife Refuge, where I’m told we can take a nice walk for a break if the weather cooperates.

Need a little motivation? Read about our previous flash mob cataloging party in November here.
* The LibraryThing wiki page for the event.
* The day: Saturday, February 21st.
* The time: TBD, probably 10:00 a.m. till 4:00 p.m., but come whenever you’re able.
* The place: Rhode Island Audubon Society Powder Mill Ledges Wildlife Refuge, 12 Sanderson Road, Smithfield, RI (Google map)
* Lunch will be provided by the Audubon Society

RSVP to sonya (at) librarything.com.

*What’s a flash mob?

Labels: Audubon Society, cataloging, flash mob, party, Rhode Island, RI

Friday, August 17th, 2007

LibraryThing party photos

Sometimes I get behind. We have at least four announcements racked up—a major hire with another this close to being hired, two new features and a contest. Before we do any of them, however, we need to get this out: the long-awaited pictures from LibraryThing pizza party in Cambridge, MA.

Turn-out was good. Freak downpours discouraged some , but at least 25 members showed up. If we had all brought our LibraryThing libraries, it would have come to some 28,000 books. No kidding.

Our thanks to everyone who came. It was great fun to put some names to faces* and find out something about who people were outside the site. I’ll post the rest of the photos on Flickr soon.


Munching.


Eager to start munching.


Conversational groupings.


Inside was less fevered.


Knitters knitting.


Reader reading.


Harvard alumni plotting.


7,000(?) books between them.


Children everywhere!


Altay’s after-party. We had an astounding amount of pizza left over.**


It seems unfair to expose others and not myself. But nobody took a picture of me at the party. So, here I am the next morning, feeding Liam wineberries.***

*Oh, except for one person—not shown—nobody objected to being on film and online. But I left off names to protect the innocent. No such policy prevented Flickr: herzogbr from identifying Altay and the back of my head.
**Not to mention alcohol. We actually gained there, and came back to Portland with a small trash barrel full of beer. We have had exactly one left—a Sam Adams. I think this means adding Dutch books was some sort of drunken dare.
***No photos of Abby either. But here she is presenting at Readercon, and here she is with the inestimable Kate Sheehan of the Danbury, CT library, at Library Camp in NYC.

Labels: flickr, party, wineberries

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

LibraryThing party in Cambridge

As promised, we’re throwing a big cookout party, open to everyone. Bring your kids, your dogs, your books, and prepare yourself for Tim’s grilling prowess…

When: Saturday, July 28th, 4pm—whenever.

Where: 15 Gurney Street, Cambridge MA (Google map)*. It’s about 15 minutes walking from the Square. You can also take the 72 (Huron) bus, and ask for the Fayerweather stop.

RSVP! [Tim writes:] We’re throwing it at my parent’s house. My mother is beside herself with the idea that everyone with an internet connection will show up. She begs me to get some RSVPs. So, if you’re planning on coming, RSVP. But don’t let not RSVPing stop you.

We’ve applied for a don’t-ticket-us parking permit for the day, so you’ll be able to park on Gurney Street and a neighboring street.

Can’t wait to see everyone!

*Google has it wrong. The name of the street is Gurney. “Revere’s Corner” stems from a city of Cambridge sign for “Reeve’s Corner.” Cambridge and the neighboring communities do a lot of this—calling intersections “corners” and naming them after local worthies, mostly war dead (but not here). It’s a great thing to do, I suppose, but it sure messes up Google.

Labels: party

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

More books than Harvard

LibraryThing has passed Harvard University, the second-largest library in the United States. LibraryThing members have cataloged some 15,731,298 books, putting us 175,000 above Harvard’s count (as reported by the American Library Association).

There are, of course, many similarities between Harvard and LibraryThing. For example, neither institution was founded by a Harvard graduate. Also Harvard has a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. If members can be believed—and why not?—LibraryThing has one too. But there are also differences. Where Harvard has 53 books by J. K. Rowling; LibraryThing has 117,866!

Anyway, it’s a great excuse for a party—in Cambridge. We propose a big, open cookout for Saturday, July 28, possibly ending with Scorpion Bowls at the Hong Kong. Abby and I will plan and discuss it on the Bostonians Group.

It will be fun to drive down from Portland, ME. We’ve got a lot of Cambridge connections at LibraryThing. I grew up and spent much of my life there (over by Fresh Pond). Abby currently lives in Cambridgeport. And Altay graduated from Harvard. It certainly my favorite place; I’m positively itching to get back to the Harvard Bookstore!

We’d love to hang out with local LibraryThing-ers. Pencil us in?

PS: We also hit 20 million tags. Yipes!
PPS: No, we’re not comparing LibraryThing’s virtual “collection” to Harvard’s real one in any way except size—if you gathered all of LibraryThing members’ books together, and put them on shelves, they’ve fill about the same space (give or take).

We find these numbers a good way to get people to understand that LibraryThing isn’t somy tiny, geeky hobby project (“Catalog your books? Who would want to do that?). Anyway, if you’re tired of the milestone, we don’t have another one until 20 million books, which won’t be until the Fall.

Labels: cambridge, harvard, harvard university, librarything size, party, widener