I originally designed the “comments” field to hold information like “slight scratching; given to me by Bunny.” But people started putting reviews in, some many reviews. Others, such as dhamell wanted a place to stick URLs to a blog review.

So, in addition to “comments” there is now a field for “reviews.” These reviews can be seen on the catalog pages, but there’s a more efficient way.

Before the change books were designated either or , indicating whether other people owned it or not. These are now replaced by and if the book is reviewed by at least one person. Click the button to see both the “social information” (who has it) and the reviews. I should probably also have a special icon indicating when you’ve reviewed it (ie., a hot pink bubble?). Icons make me happy.

There’s one complication. Before I distinguished between comments and reviews LibraryThing users added over 3,000 comments. I briefly considered trying to separate them myself. Instead, in a day or so there will be a page where you can select the comments that are reviews and move them over.

Let me know what you think. I’m all ears.

PS: We’re over 60,000. From now on I’ll only announce multiples of 25,000.

We’ve hit 45,000 books—well more than 5,000/day now. This is remarkable in that “Add Books” was broken for an hour. It’s fixed now, and I’m moving on to pressing bugs and expansions.

By popular request, I have tentatively installed “autocompleting” tags on the Add Books screen (click “autocomplete tags.”) Autocompleting means that when you type part of a tag, LibraryThing will suggest the rest of it based on previous tags. Some browsers try to do this, but field-by-field not tag-by-tag. Play around with it; it’s nifty. (It uses the amazing WICK.)

If people like it, I’ll install it on the card edit page. I’ll also make it use recent tags without using “update.” But I myself find it a little distracting. Should it continue to be merely an option?

LibraryThing was written up by Andrew Brown in the Guardian‘s daily email digest “The Wrap.” The Wrap is subscription only, but apparently reaches some 40,000 people, and not a few have since stopped by.

The article is long and, as stated, not free, but I can share the opening paragraph:

“Almost every day someone comes up with a use for the internet that
makes you wonder why no one has thought of it before. Once a year,
maybe, one of these good ideas gets built. Last week, one of these
simple, brilliant ideas got built, and it’s good news for anyone who
owns the books they read.”

Brown’s weblog notes Bibliophil and Reader2, who also had similar ideas (and Bibliophil had it first). Brown’s opinion that Bibliophil has “rotted” is a bit strong—the webmaster wrote to me that he’s in the process of a major upgrade.

Brown is optimistic about the business possibilities. I think he’s wrong: the internet produces much more value than it captures. But I intend to make some money (2-4 memberships/day?) and that money will pay for the new server I’m getting this week, and some of the time. At the current rate, LibraryThing is adding 150,000 books/mo. That kind of database isn’t free.

Comments suggest that $10 isn’t a big barrier for people. I may raise this a little in the future, or switch to a yearly rate, but “free or cheap” will always be the deal, and, of course, current paid members are locked in for life.

Meanwhile, I’m still working on features. The “Add Books” page changed a little. If the LC has just one match it no longer automatically adds it to your library, but shows you the cover and lets you try Amazon. There are a few other such tweaks.

Keep the suggestions coming. I have a backlog, but expect to work continuously on this for some weeks to come.

We’ve hit 30,000 books! That’s 5,000/day for four days in a row.

New features slowed today as made technical changes to ensure LibraryThing can handle many times that number. (But you’ll notice profiles now have watchlists and a user search function.) But don’t worry, a major upgrade (hint: more libraries) is just around the corner.

Keep sending me suggestions. If I don’t respond right away, it’s probably because I’m acting on it.

Some new features.

• Formerly the icon just gave you the Library of Congress record. If you wanted to know a given book’s ISBN you had to switch display styles. This was clunky, and not everyone got it (eg., my sister complained that LibraryThing only recorded author and title!). Now you can click on the card icon to get all the fields, a larger version of the cover AND the LC card.
• The screen also gives you Amazon links. I need to include links back to Amazon if I’m going to use their API, and I think non-flashy links are a service of sorts. Yes, I get a 5% commission. I plan to take than commission and buy a cup of coffee every week.
• In addition to the icon, which adds someone else’s book to your library, books you already have are marked with a plus icon . I’ve kept the icon, which tells you others have the item (but not necessarily you).
• When you click to someone’s catalog, it now defaults to sorting by “sharedness” (thing you also have first, followed by things others have).

We’ve hit 20,000 books this evening, going from 10,00 in less than two days. Hooray.

You can now leave a comment on someone’s profile page (eg., “hey, I have lots of books on Maori art too!”). You can shut off comments on your profile page. By default I shut it off on everyone with a private library (about 20 of 680).

Do people want the ability to leave comments? This is super easy to add. I’m picturing each profile has a section at the bottom that works like a guestbook. You can leave either a public or a private comment. The recipient can delete them. The sender can delete or edit his own. A user can turn off commenting, with all private libraries defaulted to comments-off.

I’m thinking it would be nice. But I don’t want to turn this thing into “Friendster for books” as someone (wrongly) dubbed it. I may add the ability to “bookmark” other people’s libraries, but the bookmarks will not be called “friends,” with the inevitable “you’re so-and-so’s friend but they’re not yours” dynamic. Besides, I hold to the traditional view that friends need to have been drunk together.

I’ve added support for Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.fr and Amazon.de. It took a while, but it works. (Don’t mention “character sets” to me today. I might start crying.) There’s a little menu on the Add books page.

I’ve also added the ability to search “the Amazons” first. Whether this makes sense depends upon the depth of the LC’s collections in a language and what you’re looking for. I have a feeling that non-US scholarly works are well-represented, but for something like French Manga it’s pointless to try. If you’re entering a lot of non-US books, let me know which you end up using.

Next up: Sleeping.

10,000 books reached at 6:23:17 EST.