We’re now ready to announce the winners of our Non-English bookpiles contest, but before I do that, I need to first award the prizes for what is definitely the longest-running bookpile contest in LibraryThing history.

The winner of the 30-million book/LT’s 3rd birthday bookpile contest (yes, we’re now almost at 60 million books and have just passed the 5.5-year mark) is Flickr member asperschlager for “Colorful Book Pile.” Email me to claim your prizes (a CueCat, an LT t-shirt, and a gift membership. Please email me (jeremy@librarything.com) to claim your prize.

LTer kristenmm takes the runner-up prize for her book pile, which contains “titles that I think describe LT itself, its users, employees, or features.” Email me to claim your gift membership, and we’re going to send along a t-shirt too.

Thanks to all those who submitted entries, and we do apologize for the delay. Better late than never, right?

Now, on to the main event! We asked members to submit images of non-English bookpiles, for use on the homepages of the various language versions of LibraryThing (from Dutch and Catalan to Russian and Japanese).

We received more than 100 excellent entries via Flickr (browse the photostream) and in members’ LT galleries, covering at least 23 separate languages (plus polyglot). See the full list of languages here.

The winning images, as well as selected other submissions for each language, will go into a rotation on the homepage, so that visitors and members might see a different image each time the page is loaded. We’ll be doing something similar for the main site as well. When we launch the new sites, they’ll look a little something like this (the Swedish site):

Now: the list of winners! If your name is here, please send me an email or a profile message (jbd1) with your choice of either CueCat or LT t-shirt (and if t-shirt, whether you’d prefer black or red, and what size), and your mailing address. If you won more than once, you can have a combination of your choosing!

I’ve linked the language name to the winning picture:

• Albanian – q_and_a
• Bulgarian – kotarana
• Catalan – puigmalet
• Chinese – justjim
• Czech – sandiik
• Dutch – varese2002 and Dutch 2 – janter2 (Flickr)
• Finnish – mellu
• French – staffordcastle
• German – jcbrunner
• Hebrew – Reysbro
• Japanese – aya.herron
• Macedonian – q_and_a
• Pirate – niklook
• Polish – Beata Anna (Flickr)
• Polyglot – jophan (Flickr)
• Russian – q_and_a
• Serbian – q_and_a
• Slovenian – bluejulie2009 (Flickr)
• Spanish – elfo
• Swedish – bookholic13
• Tagalog – editfish
• Turkish – bandedtulip
• Welsh – gwernin

We had a few entries in other languages that were out of focus just wouldn’t work for the homepage piles; we’d still like to have images for these and the rest of the languages, so please feel free to send along additional bookpile pictures! If we end up using them, we’ll send along a t-shirt.

And finally, the overall winner, claimant of both a CueCat and a t-shirt, is elfo, for the beautiful Spanish book pile at left.

Thanks to everyone for your entries, and we’ll let you know when the new homepage versions go live!

You may not know it, but LibraryThing is available in almost 50 languages, from Dutch and Catalan to Russian and Japanese–not to mention Pirate.

Member civitas points out that whatever language you’re on, the home page sports a pile of English books. As he put it, “The effect may be subtle, but why give a prospective new user something negative to think about, or to have a vague feeling about, before signing up …?”

We agree. So, a contest! Win a CueCat, or a LibraryThing t-shirt (plus everlasting fame and glory, of course).

What to do: Go to the list of language sites (there are 51 total) and choose which* to submit. We’ll also accept “Polyglot” submissions, to use as the default for any languages we don’t get entries for.

The photo:

• Should show a stack of books in that language (probably ~10 books or so is optimal).
• Light background
• We should be able to read the titles clearly
• Don’t include an e-reader (they look dated too fast)

Where to post it—do one of the following:

• Post to Flickr with the tag “LTInternationalBookpile” (also tag them “LibraryThing“). If you make a new account it can take a few days for your photos to be publicly accessible, so post a URL to them in the comments here.
• Upload the pictures to your LT profile (be sure to let me know they’re there by adding a comment to this post with your LT username).
• If all else fails, email your submissions to me (jeremy@librarything.com).
• Regardless of how you upload the images, please make sure to tell us what language you’re submitting for! LibraryThing employees are a linguistically talented lot** but labels will help.

All submissions must be received by Monday, 31 January at 6pm EST. Talk about ideas/submissions here.

What we’ll do: Once the entries are in, we’ll pick a winner for each language, and they’ll have their choice of a CueCat or a LibraryThing t-shirt (plus the aforementioned fame and glory). We’ll also pick an overall winner, who’ll win both a CueCat and a t-shirt, plus a membership upgrade or gift membership).

While you’re at it … This contests also offers us the perfect chance to remind people that translations for the various non-English sites are ongoing, and new contributors are always welcome! Anybody out there know Maori? Tim made the Maori translation in a fit of optimism during a talk in New Zealand. But it has yet to receive a single edit!

* You can submit bookpiles for more than one language. You can even win for more than one language. Tim’s standard fine print (“Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial”) applies. Any questions or clarifications, just ask.
** Tim’s done Hittite, Abby Russian and Chris Catalfo is fluent in Italian.