Archive for the ‘ltfl libraries’ Category

Friday, June 24th, 2011

The Perfect Library Catalog?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect library catalog. That is, it uses all nine LibraryThing for Libraries OPAC enhancements—Tags, Lexile® Measures, Other Editions, Reviews, Shelf Browse, Similar Books, Series, Awards and QR Codes. All together, we’ve turned an ordinary Webpac library catalog into a social, shareable, graphical, informational and mobile beast!(1)

(Click to see full-size)

Great as it is, this catalog doesn’t exist. Abby and I are working on new handouts for LibraryThing for Libraries and Library Anywhere. For the former we needed a library that used all our enhancements, including a new one we’re announcing today (QR Codes). Unfortunately, although more than 200 library systems use LibraryThing for Libraries to make their OPACs better (a full list), none have absolutely every one of them today. So we’ve made our own, leaning heavily on the excellent Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service, which has almost all our enhancements.

If you’re in New Orleans for the American Library Assocation, come visit us at booth 827. We’ll show you how to make your catalog as good as this one! Or better, because it will actually exist. Oh, and pick up one of our nifty badge thingies.


1. If it had a search bar it would be truly perfect.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, ltfl libraries

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

LTFL: now available for Evergreen

We’ve been working on adding the LibraryThing for Libraries enhancements to the open-source catalog Evergreen. We’ve worked out the kinks, and it’s ready to roll.

We’ve integrated both the Catalog Enhancements (tags, tag browser, recommendations, other editions and translations) and the Reviews Enhancement (300,000 LibraryThing reviews, patron reviewing, Facebook app, blog widgets).

If you’d like to see how LTFL looks, check out the catalog of Kent County, Maryland. We owe them a thousand thanks for working with us on making this work.

Labels: Evergreen, librarything for libraries, ltfl, ltfl libraries

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Categories for your LTFL Reviews

Teen reviews from Seattle Public Library

We’ve a new feature to LibraryThing for Libraries, suggested by Lare over at the Seattle Public Library. He was looking for a way to show off just some of their reviews—reviews for their summer reading program.

Libraries can now add “categories” for their reviewers to check off—library book club books, Big Read books, reviews by library staff, etc. And the library can show off just one category of reviews in their LTFL blog widget.

Seattle has made blog-widget pages for their kids section, teen section, and even their adult section of the site. By categorizing the reviews into age-related groups, they can feature items in their catalog that would interest the patrons for each demographic.

We’ll be releasing some more cool features at American Library Association meeting in Chicago next week.

Labels: ltfl, LTFL categories, ltfl libraries, LTFL Reviews, Seattle Public Library

Monday, December 8th, 2008

Randolph County Public Library wins award for using LTFL


Congratulations are in order for the very hip (pun intended for you OPAC geeks) Randolph County Public Library for receiving the Outstanding Library Service Innovation Award from the North Carolina Public Library Directors Association (NCPLDA) for their implementation of LibraryThing for Libraries.

They also won the Outstanding Library Promotional Project Award for their electronic newsletter and email alert service.

Well done, Randolph County Public Library!

UPDATE:
Coverage in the Randolph Guide newspaper.

Labels: awards, librarything for libraries, ltfl, ltfl libraries, North Carolina, randolph county public library

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

The Nifty Fifty

big bucket of fifty chicken nuggetsWe’ve just hit our first major milestone: there are now 50 libraries using LibraryThing for Libraries. See the full list here. For a visual representation of what may be the opposite of LibraryThing for Libraries, but of the same number, look to the right.

We’re also pleased that number 50 is Portland Public Library, in LibraryThing’s hometown. We attended the implementation, and we’re happy to say that their bouncing baby catalog enhancements are doing just fine.

These first 50 libraries include early innovators like Seattle Public Library and San Francisco State University. It was satisfying to hear prospective libraries say they watch these innovators for emerging technology to look into, and that’s how they found out about us. Three cheers for word of blog.

We’re convinced that LTFL is a highly enriching supplement to the white bread that is the standard online catalog and we’re happy that we can create something that meshes with OPACs to make them more functional.

So what’s next? We’re getting the reviewing enhancement ready to show. If anyone wants to come check it out, we’ll be showing them off at the ALA annual conference. In the meantime, you can pat our backs at Book Expo America.

Thanks to deovolenti for the image.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, ltfl libraries, Portland Public Library, San Francisco State University, Seattle Public Library, web 2.0

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

LTFL at 33 34 36 / Abby and Tim at ALA

Casey has just updated our list of LibraryThing for Libraries customers. We’ve hit 33 libraries, which is wonderful. (See the full list.) With no sales force and only half a developer, that’s fantastic. LTFL is clearly starting to matter in the library world. We will be adding resources to it accordingly, and look forward to finding out more about what current and potential libraries want from it.

Not coincidentally, Abby and I are going to ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia. We didn’t buy a booth; they’ve expensive and tie you down a lot. Instead, we’ll be going to as many talks as we can, meeting with people and describing cheesesteaks as a “business expense.” If you’re at ALA and want to chat in passing or over a beer, let us know.

Contact details:
tim@librarything
abigail@librarything.com
cell: 207 272-0553 (note area code 207, not 208, as first posted!)

UPDATE: Thirty-FOUR. As Casey whooped: “I totally outsold Jesus” (source). Then Casey dropped dead.
UPDATE 2: Thirty six. Holy smokes.

Labels: ala, ALA midwinter, librarything for libraries, ltfl, ltfl libraries

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

LibraryThing for Libraries: Waterford and Deschutes

Two more libraries have added LibraryThing for Libraries:

Waterford Institute of Technology (catalog) in Waterford in south east Ireland. WIT becomes our first academic library, and our first one outside the US. Apart from that, we were particularly happy to get the ball up and rolling. WIT’s David Kane and I have been corresponding for some time, and quite profitably. Long before LibraryThing for Libraries, he tried to bolt our recommendations onto the WIT catalog. His solution—functional but requred real-time scraping of the WIT catalog—threw the technical challenges of LibraryThing for Libraries in high relief. David was also intrumental in setting up my keynote at the Irish Innovative Users Group. David’s current passion is the WIT Institutional Repository, about which he gave a talk at the IIUG.

It’s good to see LibraryThing for Libraries operating in a different context. While something like romance comes up fairly light at WIT, their holdings in tags like engineering and programming dazzle, and really give our suggestion algorithms a work-out!

Deschutes Public Library of Deschutes County in Oregon. Our largest library so far! Deschutes has five branches serving 140,000 patrons, in the fastest growing area of Oregon. They have quite a broad collection, but my eye was drawn to Why cats paint : a theory of feline aesthetics, which suggests mostly cat books, of course.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl libraries

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

Bedford Public Library adds LibraryThing for Libraries

The Bedford Public Library in Bedford, TX (town, Wikipedia) has become the second library to put LibraryThing for Libraries in their online catalog.

Trying out LTFL fits with Bedford’s Public Libraries forward-looking stance, with free wifi, integration with Library ELF and other initiatives.

You can see LibraryThing for Libraries at work with books like:

Both show our “semi-FRBR” edition-combination at work—cross-linking to large-print and audio editons—and our “similar books” algorithm, for finding other books you might want to read.

We are now also able to link to tag pages:

Of course, tags aren’t the “answer,” but just another way to find things, with different strengths. If tags bring Bedford’s genre fiction holdings into high relief, it doesn’t do as good a job with Texas history as their LCSH headings.

Some technical details. Bedford Public Library is another Innovative Interfaces Web OPAC catalog, like the first, the Danbury Public Library. Our third library will be one too. So it bears reminding that LibraryThing for Libraries works with any OPAC, and no better with Innovative’s. We think it’s spreading through them because people like to have a tangible example. That or it’s the library equivalent of the Brazilian Internet Phenomenon.

Even though it was the same OPAC we took the time to make the CSS fit in perfectly with Bedford’s design–a very different green-based one. Our chief LTFL engineer, Altay, is becoming quite a faker!

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl libraries