New server coming
LibraryThing was featured on Lifehacker and Metafilter, among others. My server is melting and service is a little slow. I'll have a much faster one up tonight or tomorrow.
My email box is also filling with suggestions. For new-comers, here are some improvements I'm working on:
My email box is also filling with suggestions. For new-comers, here are some improvements I'm working on:
- User-defined fields
- British Library searches, then other library searches
- "Power" editing, including applying tags to multiple books in one sweep
- Bar-code/UPC/EAN numbers
- RSS feeds
- iPod export (so you can check if you have something)
posted by Tim at 11:46 AM
23 Comments:
Psst! Your Lifehacker link is going to Metafiler....
Such a wonderful site; thanks so much! Just one suggestion: the ability to scan and include a cover thumbnail of a book that has to be added manually would be really useful.
Dunno if this is the right place to ask...
Will you support BibTeX (LaTeX)-Fields? Or is that a candidate for the "user field" idea?
And can I import bibtex files?
On another entry Steven Klassen wrote "$10 is more than reasonable and you can't resist the lifetime subscription offer. I plan on living forever, so that should work out nicely. ;)"
Policy has therefore changed:
(1) If science cures death, LibraryThing memberships will expire at age 100.
(2) As is well known, you cannot set up a trust that lasts forever. Usually you peg it to the life of the person or persons getting the money, but lawyers have been known to pick a small yogurt-eating village in the Republic of Georgia. Just to be clear, you cannot do that.
(3) Don't try to slip one by me; I'll be reading the obituaries.
I found this via Lifehacker - and posted it to LiveJournal. I've not much of a friendslist, but at least 5 people off it have joined :) Thanks so very much for this!
Regardless of the advancement of science, I personally plan on living past 100. Also eating yoghurt. I hope these are still allowed! (;
"iPod export (so you can check if you have something)"
This is exactly why I created a book database program for my PDA. Tome Vault. It's great to have all the book you own or want to own right in your hand at the book store.
http://appsbyaaron.tripod.com.
PS. I also had a post on LibraryThing on my blog and have a perm-a-link there. how bout directing some ppl my way?
http://appsbyaaron.blogspot.com
I was just curious about the listings for top 25 tags -- do the numbers indicate the number of books with the tag, or the number of users who include the tag at least once in their collection?
And this tool is just fantastic. Thank you.
Also useful would be to include the URL of thumbnail of the book cover as a field for CSV export! Keep up the great work!
Here's an odd thing, and I'm not sure it's at all possible, but....
Say you have a book that someone else also has, but they are using a better tag for sorting than you thought up. Would there be a way to say, merge tag codes if you wanted?
By the way, I mentioned this site at Forward Motion for Writers and people there are now telling me that I'm evil. I can't imagine why they would say such a thing.
Signed up for a lifetime subscription yesterday, and I already have a suggestion. I'd like to see a universal search and replace for tags. I made a couple of misspellings, used one tag then realized there was a better one, etc, and I'd like to be able to tell the database: replace all instances of tag X with tag Y.
I'd like to second Sotonohito's request for a global Search and Replace option for tags. I've had to do a manual search-'n'-tweak on several tags that I later thought better of. It was rather laborious, since I'd already added quite a few books using those tags. A global Search and Replace would be a fantastic feature in all kinds of ways.
And thanks again for this great service. After telling my best friend about your site (and walking him through it), he said, "Wow! This website is heroin for book collectors like you!" And he's not far off right ;-)
As we've noticed, my entries for the Great Books of the Western World created some odd problems. I was wondering if it would help if I changed the title order around, so that the 'Great Books of the Western World, V (whatever), comes after the name of the person it covers. Would this screw things up if I went in and made that change now?
I am *so* looking forward to mass-applying tags, having just taglessly added 140-odd books from the nearest bookshelf in sight via the search page, before I got as far as adding tags. I don't want to go back and edit by hand! *eek*
Oh, maybe worth looking into import (matching on ISBNs) from eg ReaderWare, or specifically-formatted csv files (as lots of people have something around where they half started cataloguing some other way)?
Some suggestions, maybe not for right now, but later on:
Include the ability to catalog "serials" (i.e, magazines, newspapers, etc.), videos, and CDs/LPs. With CDs, you could tie into the CDDB. Amazon has videos and CDs.
--Robert
Whooooa! Hold your horses. "Slow motion will get you there faster". Try your best to work out all the upcoming bugs with your new client server. Think of this site as a 201 course meal---try not to serve it all at once. So far it has been quite tasty. Thanks for your efforts so far.
on the edit profile page, the about link points to the user page
Good catch. Got it. I'lll check other pages to see if it "spread."
This is great except for not being able to select from different editions. I tried to add my Douglas Adams books and the search only gave me some editions I've never even seen before! But I'm sure you'll fix that soon. Keep up the good work!
To echo everyone else, thanks for this wonderful service. I love the idea of power editing -- applying tags to a lot of books at once. It would really help get over the hump at initial library entry.
I'd like this data to be portable. I'd like to keep it on my pda (at least my own personal collection).
I suggest you make a way to export to csv or excel file. that would be a major benefit.
Hi Robert. It already exports to CSV (see the "extras" section). And I'm working with a guy to export to a Palm program. Expect announcement soon.
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