Archive for the ‘librarything for libraries’ Category

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

LibraryThing for Libraries supported in Discovery Layers

We now have several libraries who have installed LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements in their discovery layers!

Enterprise
Check out Mount Laurel Library, with Reviews and Catalog Enhancements (Tags, Similar Books, and Other Editions) in their Enterprise catalog—See Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoneix.

SOPAC
Arlington Heights Memorial Library has enabled Similar books, Reviews, and Lexile measures in their SOPAC catalog—See the record for The Night Circus.

EBSCOhost Discovery Service
Nelson Public Library in New Zealand has our Reviews and Catalog Enhancements (Tags, Similar Books, and Other Editions) working in EBSCOhost Discovery Service—See the record for The help.

VuFind
As we announced last summer, LibraryThing for Libraries also integrates with VuFind!

Learn more
Email me (abby@librarything.com) with questions about any of the LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancements, or our mobile product, Library Anywhere! To subscribe, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

We also do weekly webinars to show off both Library Anywhere and all the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements for your library catalog (Tags, Similar books, Other editions, Series, Awards, Shelf Browse, Reviews, Stack Map, and Lexile measures)! Click here to register. On the Browse Meetings page, search for “LibraryThing” to see a listing of all upcoming webinars.

Labels: discovery layer, EBSCOhost, Enterprise, librarything for libraries, ltfl, SOPAC

Monday, February 13th, 2012

Stack Map: A new LibraryThing for Libraries Enhancement!

Stack Map, our newest LibraryThing for Libraries enhancement, lets you see exactly where a book is physically located in the library.

Stack Map adds a link (with an icon if you choose) to the call numbers in your catalog that opens a dynamic stack map with directions to that particular item.

Each stack map also includes a QR code which a patron can scan to immediately pull up that map on their mobile phone, to help them get there.

Setting up the call-number ranges

The setup is easy—you define a range of call numbers, and then upload a map that covers it. It’s up to you how large or small each range is—you can map to floors, sections or shelves.

This LibraryThing for Libraries enhancement requires NO uploading or updating of your holdings with us, which means it’s easy to set up and even easier to maintain.

Give it a try now, in Point Park University’s catalog. Some records to start with:

Learn more
Email me (abby@librarything.com) with any questions about this any of the LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancements, or our mobile product, Library Anywhere! To subscribe, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

We also do weekly webinars to show off both Library Anywhere and all the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements for your library catalog (tags, similar books, other editions, series, awards, shelf browse, reviews, and Lexile measures)! Click here to register. On the Browse Meetings page, search for LibraryThing to see a listing of all upcoming webinars.

Labels: librarything for libraries, stack map

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Heading to Dallas (visit us at ALA Midwinter!)

Kate and I will be at ALA Midwinter in Dallas this weekend, stop by to say hi! We’ll be at booth 1650.

The exhibits are open from the evening of Friday the 20th through the afternoon of Monday the 23rd. If you’re in the area and weren’t planning on attending, we can offer some free passes to the exhibit hall (note, this will ONLY get you into the exhibit hall, not any of the conference sessions). Click here to get a free exhibit pass.

We also have a series of improvements and features we’re adding to Library Anywhere and to the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements–watch the blog for more, or stop by the booth for a preview!

Labels: ALA midwinter, librarything for libraries, ltfl

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

New “theme” for Shelf Browse

We recently added a new metal shelf look for our LibraryThing for Libraries Shelf Browse enhancement. Now you have a choice between a wooden shelf and this new silver “metal” one! Because a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few screenshots of the same shelf in both themes.



If your library already subscribes to the Shelf Browse enhancement for your catalog you can turn it on easily (just use the “Shelf Theme” dropdown on the Configuration page for Shelf Browse).

Learn more
Email me (abby@librarything.com) with any questions about this any of the LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancements, or our mobile product, Library Anywhere! To subscribe, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

We also do weekly webinars to show off both Library Anywhere and all the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements for your library catalog (tags, similar books, other editions, series, awards, shelf browse, reviews, and Lexile measures)! Click here to register. On the WebEx registration page, under Attend a Meeting click “Browse Meetings” and then “Monthly” to register for scheduled webinars.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, shelf browse

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

200 Libraries on Library Anywhere

iPhone version

We’re pleased to announce that in the year since we launched, over 200 libraries now use Library Anywhere as their mobile catalog and homepage. Library Anywhere takes an existing OPAC and makes it mobile—you can also create a custom homepage with Library Anywhere (add hours, events, contact info and more)—making it your entire mobile library website.

Library Anywhere is flexible, and works with a wide variety of systems—which means we’re used by a wide range of libraries—from small public libraries and school libraries to large universities and huge consortia of public libraries. A few examples (of many):

New Features
We’ve released a number of pretty substantial updates recently—version 1.4 of Library Anywhere is now live in the iTunes app store, and in the Android market. Some of the new features include:

Barcode scanning
Our new barcode scanning feature is available in both the iPhone (and iPad, iPod Touch, etc.) and Android apps. It lets you quickly scan the ISBN on a book and see if your library has a copy. Read the more about barcode scanning here.

Multilingual capability
Library Anywhere now includes the ability for any library to translate or edit any of the strings of English text into whatever language they like.

Libraries can also choose to have multiple languages and link between them—one in Spanish, one in English, for example. Read more about multilingual support in Library Anywhere here.

Built-in web browser
The Version 1.3 update of Library Anywhere added a built-in web browser. This means that when you click external links in Library Anywhere (that go to ebook records, mobile databases, etc.), they no longer completely leave Library Anywhere, but launch a browser within Library Anywhere. That makes it simple to just close and go back to the page you were on before.

Saved Searches/Booklists
We’ve added the ability to include booklists on your Library Anywhere homepage.

If you can make booklists in your OPAC (new items, staff picks, etc.) then you can feed those same lists into Library Anywhere. Just choose the ‘action’ type Direct catalog URL, and put the URL to the OPAC list in there, as in the image below:

Screen rotation
We’ve enabled screen rotation for iOS, so when you’re on your iPhone or iPad, you can now move your phone to switch between portrait and landscape mode.

Incredible statistics
We recently added a comprehensive statistics section to Library Anywhere, keeping track of traffic, users, native app vs. mobile web use, and more. Read more in this blog post, which also includes a screencast.

More coming
We have a number of additional updates coming down the pipeline, so stay tuned.


About Library Anywhere
Library Anywhere is the mobile catalog and homepage for over 200 libraries and library systems worldwide. See all the libraries using Library Anywhere by simply clicking the … menu within Library Anywhere and choose “Select a Library”. Read more about Library Anywhere here.

To order Library Anywhere, or get a free trial, call 877 340-2400, or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com. You can also email questions to Abby@librarything.com.

Learn more: Attend a webinar
We do weekly webinars to show off both Library Anywhere and all the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements for your library catalog (tags, similar books, other editions, series, awards, shelf browse, reviews, and Lexile measures)!

Webinars are scheduled for every Tuesday afternoon at 2pm EST. Sign up for one today and I’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know, and more, I promise.

Click here to register. On the WebEx registration page, under Attend a Meeting click “Browse Meetings” and then “Monthly” to register for scheduled webinars.

Labels: app, iphone app, library anywhere, librarything for libraries, mobile, mobile catalog, mobile web

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Library Anywhere screencast / LTFL weekly webinars

Screencast
I’ve just made a screencast of Library Anywhere, our mobile product for libraries. What it does, how it works, even a glimpse at the administrative backend! Click the image below to watch.

Webinars—LibraryThing for Libraries and Library Anywhere
We’ve also started doing weekly webinars to demo both Library Anywhere and all the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements for your library catalog (tags, similar books, other editions, series, awards, shelf browse, reviews, and Lexile measures)!

They’re scheduled for every Tuesday afternoon at 2pm EST. Sign up for one today and I’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know, and more, I promise.

Click here to register. On the WebEx registration page, under Attend a Meeting click “Browse Meetings” and then “Monthly” to register for scheduled webinars.

Labels: library anywhere, librarything for libraries, screencasts, webinars

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Series and Awards in Library Anywhere

We’ve recently integrated our newest LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancement—Series and Awards—into Library Anywhere. This means that if your library is subscribing to Series and Awards and Library Anywhere, you’ll now see it not only in your web catalog, but also in Library Anywhere!

For example: scan this QR code with your phone to jump to the record for The Hunger Games in Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library’s Library Anywhere catalog.

Scroll down the page to find series and awards data. You’ll see on that bib page any awards the book has won, and any series it’s part of. Click the award or series title, and you’ll then see all the books belonging to it (as in the screenshots below).

Series and Awards join the other LTFL enhancements already integrated into Library Anywhere for LTFL subscribers—reviews, tags, similar books, and other editions.

Email me (abby@librarything.com) with any questions about any of the LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancements, or Library Anywhere! To subscribe, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Labels: awards, library anywhere, librarything for libraries, series

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

LibraryThing for Libraries International

We’ve recently added a series of improvements to the LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancements, in an attempt to make them more useful and friendly to a non-English audience.

Header text
The header for each enhancement (e.g. “Tags” or “Similar books”) has always been editable, so you can label the Similar books enhancement “You might also like” or “recommended books”. Or, maybe title it “Lignende titler” or “Soortgelijke boeken” or “Liknande böcker” or “Obras similares.”

Translation of all English text
We’ve recently added the ability to let libraries translate the entire interface of the LTFL enhancements. All the text in the reviews lightbox, for example, or in the tag browser. See the below screenshot of the tag browser in a German library.

To use the translation feature, log into your LTFL account and click the Enhancements tab. Click on “Edit/Translate Interface” under the Configure section, and start translating!

Language preferences
When multiple editions of a work are available at your library, LibraryThing for Libraries picks the most popular edition. We’ve just added the ability to preference certain languages. This lets you, for example, pick a less popular German edition over a more popular English one. In the screenshot above, note that it’s pointing to “Sakrileg” by Dan Brown (instead of the English edition, “The Da Vinci Code”).

To enable language preferences, log into your LTFL account and click the Enhancements tab. Then navigate to Global configuration, and scroll down to the new field titled “Edition language preference.” Here you can enter a comma-separated list of MARC language names (e.g., ger, fre) that will control which edition of a work is displayed.

About LibraryThing for Libraries: LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) is a system of OPAC enhancements, designed to make your OPAC more engaging and informative. LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements include Tags, Reviews, Similar Books, Shelf Browse, Series, Awards, Lexile measures and Other Editions. We also offer Library Anywhere, a full-featured mobile catalog and website for any OPAC.

To subscribe to LibraryThing for Libraries, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

If you already subscribe to one of the LTFL enhancements and would like some help configuring translation settings, email abby@librarything.com.

Labels: international, languages, librarything for libraries, ltfl, translation

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

LibraryThing for Libraries in VuFind

I’m happy to announce that the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements for your catalog are now available in VuFind.

You can see the LTFL “catalog enhancements” (other editions, similar books (recommendations), and tags) live in the Swansea University’s catalogue.

LibraryThing for Libraries has a total of nine different OPAC enhancements to pick and choose from: Tags, Lexile® Measures, Other Editions, Reviews, Shelf Browse, Similar Books, Series, Awards and QR Codes. It works on a wide variety of systems—all the major OPACs and many of the minor ones as well. See all the libraries using LTFL here.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, VuFind

Friday, June 24th, 2011

LibraryThing for Libraries-Spotlight Awards

We’ve just added a feature to spotlight certain awards within our Series and Awards LibraryThing for Libraries enhancement. The awards enhancement covers 25,000 different awards and honors—from the National Book Award and the Booker Prize to the Salon Book Award and New York Times Notable Book of the Year, or even Oprah’s Book Club selections.

While some books have received one or two different awards, others may have over twenty. By default, we only show the first few (alphabetically) on a book’s page in the catalog, with a “see more” link that expands to show all. Our new spotlighting feature allows a library to choose certain awards and force them to float to the top of this list.

An Australian library can, for example, highlight local awards, that may otherwise get lost in the list. Or perhaps it’s the month when the Orange Prize is picked, and you want to spotlight all the books on the longlist or short list.

To use this feature, go to the Series and Awards moderation page within the LTFL admin. Along with the moderation we’ve always provided (don’t think Oprah’s Book Club counts as an honor? Fine, remove it!), you’ll now see a ‘promote’ button. You can search for awards by name, or browse. Spotlighted awards will always be pushed to the top of the list, and will appear with a star icon next to them.

Labels: awards, librarything for libraries