LibraryThing "beta"
After a few weeks of development, LibraryThing is ready for public "beta" release.
When I worked in educational software, betas were suspect. Giving one to a customer would have probably been a firing offense. Google and Flickr have broken that taboo, and even given the term bleeding-edge chic. This is particularly amusing as "beta" means essentially the same thing as "under construction," now as repellent thirty-somethings with Razor scooters.
What LibraryThing's "beta" means:
When I worked in educational software, betas were suspect. Giving one to a customer would have probably been a firing offense. Google and Flickr have broken that taboo, and even given the term bleeding-edge chic. This is particularly amusing as "beta" means essentially the same thing as "under construction," now as repellent thirty-somethings with Razor scooters.
What LibraryThing's "beta" means:
- Features are still being added. The user-to-user features aren't fully developed. It makes no sense to find your closest "library match" when there are three libraries in the system.
- I'm listening. Tell me what you like, what you don't like, what you find confusing, etc. Post them here as comments, or email me at editor@isidore-of-seville.com.
- I'm giving away memberships. I'm giving away memberships to anyone I think will use it well, and might tell others about it. Mostly these are library blogers. Are you one? Let me know.
posted by Tim at 5:55 PM
11 Comments:
I thought of something that would improve the database. I would like an "owner" field that I could use to differentiate between my books and my husband's books in the database. It could also be used by families to designate who is the owner of the different books in the same catalog (husband, wife, children, etc).
One way to do this could be to have a field called "Owner's Initials", so the field wouldn't be too big (3 characters max). Using initials would be enough information for the owners of the account to differentiate which books belong to which person in the home, but would also not have information that could be used for identity theft.
I could put names or initials in the "Tags" section, but I'm hesitant to clutter that field with information that would only be applicable to my husband and I.
If it is possible, ideally what would be great is if I could have a field where I could add either his name, or my name, but have the option of making that particular field "private", so only I could see it when I was logged in. All other fields could be public, though.
Thank you so much for building this wonderful resource. Check your e-mail, as I have sent you something there as well.
Thanks you so much for your suggestions.
This could be done. I wouldn't add specific fields, but allow users to define them themselves.
That said, I feel that tags would be the best option in your case. A user-defined field could be sorted, but it couldn't be searched for as a tag might.
Do other people want private fields? This seems a bit esoteric. Maybe I'm off base.
Anyone?
I'm a library blogger (and podcaster)! You can see my site at http://openstacks.net/os. I'm operating here under the username planetneutral. Thanks for a great concept and implementation.
This is a fabulous idea! I'm a library paraprofessional newly enrolled in an MLIS program and cataloging will soon become an obsession with me. I blog (http://www.livejournal.com/users/mehetabel/), but not so much on library issues (in a public way, anyway) as yet; no doubt school will alter that.
Okay, effulgent and acorn, I agree. The custom fields idea has won, and will be done in a day or two. I think I'll restrict it to a finite number of fields (three?).
I need to think about how date fields would be done--dates don't sort well alphanumerically, but I don't want users to have to decide whether a field is for integers, dates, strings or etc. There are a million interesting features to add—eg., fields with drop-down menu selection—but there are good reasons for keeping things simple.
Tim, I'm using the service as Owain. I like it alot. I particularly appreciate its speed and am impressed with your use of the Z30.50 gateway from the Library of Congress Catalog. Do you have a PayPal account so I can send my $10 for lifetime membership? Also, I've been using AllConsuming to show current reading on my blog. Can I use a JS script to do the same thing with LibraryThing?
Jeff
I didn't answer your question: I write an intranet library blog; intranet meaning it's within a firewall (at LC as it happens).
Hey Jeff. (I'm replying here because I can't see how else to reply to you.) Thanks for commenting.
1. I'm heartened by your comments. I'm a big LC fan. I went to Georgetown and lived in DC for a while during grad school. I came to rely on and love the LC. Keep up the good work.
2. The standard way to pay the $10 is to go to your profile and click "upgrade membership." It uses Amazon.com so anyone who's used Amazon can do it. If you don't use Amazon or just prefer PayPal, go ahead and send me the money. I have an account. I think all you need is my email--editor@isidore-of-seville.com.
3. I'm sure you speak unofficially, but it's good to hear someone at the LC not oppose the project. After all, LT does mine LC data. LibraryThing uses it comparatively little--I'm guessing the Z30.50 gets a lot of traffic, some of it batch requests from other libraries. And there aren't any posted query limits. Even so, I figured there was a small chance someone would shut it down and I'd need to fall back on Amazon.
4. Interesting idea. That's the sort of service I want to expand to. (XML feeds are on my list also.) Since you don't have a public blog, I'm going to look around for similar AC widgets. LT however doesn't track "current reading," so it would have to track last items cataloged or a given tag (ie., "current reading") by entry date. Would that fit the bill?
5. Isn't there something paradoxical about internal blogs, like laboring on a best seller in Hittite? :) Don't you crave a larger readership?
Tim
Just discoved this site at http://del.icio.us.com.
After input of an ISDN No. (without spaces), into the search field, the book automatically was entered into my catalog. The book was "obscure", yet, the system you are building here caught it. Good luck in this most useful and fun endevor.....ray
Bulk editing would be good (probably to make up for the fact that I got carried away and added about 450 books without tags).
For example, I'd like to search for "Gunsmith Cats" and add the tag "manga" to all instances in my library. At the moment, it seems that I have to do this for each individual book.
A comment this many years after your launching may be a bit pointless. In any case, when you launched I was organizing the Peace Corps library in Antigua, then left in 6 months. How I wish I had known about Library Thing. I could have left something behind for someone to pick up on.
The office was actually lending to the community.
Now I am wondering how many of these Peace Corps offices with thei small collections are using Library Thing..all over the world
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