LibraryThing now searches thirty-one libraries
It's official: LibraryThing has expanded to thirty-one libraries in thirteen countries.
Not only Australians and Canadians now have major collections in their countries, but also Turks, Danes, Swedes and Dutch. US collections like Yale and the University of Chicago add more scholarly heft, and a user reported that the University of California system is excellent for paperback science fiction.
In addition to the libraries, LibraryThing also works with all the Amazons—now including Amazon Japan. All the national Amazons can also be accessed using the LibraryThing/Amazon bookmarklet, which allows you to add books to your LibraryThing library while browsing on Amazon.
European diacriticals now work well, albeit with some library-specific glitches (eg., the Australian National Library strips accents out and the Royal Danish Library sends the strangest character set). But internal searches still have some diacritical problems...
More libraries
LibraryThing will continue to add libraries. Unfortunately, not all libraries present open web interfaces. Here are global and UK lists of some of the libraries that may work. Some, like the BL, use a format I haven't designed for yet. Feel free to suggest items off the list, or other open Z39.50 libraries you know about.
Other news
Not only Australians and Canadians now have major collections in their countries, but also Turks, Danes, Swedes and Dutch. US collections like Yale and the University of Chicago add more scholarly heft, and a user reported that the University of California system is excellent for paperback science fiction.
In addition to the libraries, LibraryThing also works with all the Amazons—now including Amazon Japan. All the national Amazons can also be accessed using the LibraryThing/Amazon bookmarklet, which allows you to add books to your LibraryThing library while browsing on Amazon.
European diacriticals now work well, albeit with some library-specific glitches (eg., the Australian National Library strips accents out and the Royal Danish Library sends the strangest character set). But internal searches still have some diacritical problems...
More libraries
LibraryThing will continue to add libraries. Unfortunately, not all libraries present open web interfaces. Here are global and UK lists of some of the libraries that may work. Some, like the BL, use a format I haven't designed for yet. Feel free to suggest items off the list, or other open Z39.50 libraries you know about.
Other news
- LibraryThing will hit 325,000 books in about an hour. No, I'm not staying up for it.
- I've been trying to promote the site to the mainstream media. It seems unfair that it's been profiled in two Brazilian papers, but I can't get the Boston Globe to pick it up. Sheesh, I should start reading the Herald.
- I've been looking at similar sites, and pleased to discover LibraryThing's user growth rate matches the hot social software site 43Things (see here, reporting 12,000 users in two months; LT did 6,000 in one month). 43Things has a bunch of employees and is bankrolled by Amazon (originally in secret).
- LibraryThing is not bankrolled by Amazon or anyone else, nor are we going to sell our data to them. (Amazingly, I never really announced that before. You are a trusting lot.)
- In related news, I just finished the site's first Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. In the end, I decided against the naked-photography clause. Your pictures will be returned.
- I'm taking a breather on new libraries. Maybe users will suggest some good ones. It's hard to know what to add sometimes. I stopped when I realized that a particular Swedish word probably meant "veterinary." Not a top priority.
- I'd like to add more data back into the search view. (The "little divet" that used to come up when you use the Library of Congress.)
- I should add RSS. I've been promising it for ages.
- Ditto power editing/tagging.
posted by Tim at 10:02 AM
23 Comments:
Cool Privacy policy (however odd it is to write that specific set of words).
The current "beta" deal is $10 for 200 books.
Is that strictly what you mean? We've all paid $10 for more than 200 books...
Thanks. Good catch! Changed.
Let me know if anything else worries you. My lawyer—okay, my father-in-law who is a lawyer—has yet to look it over, so I may have to change pieces.
Quick bug report: under "add books", in the drop-down menu to select which database to use, "Start with Goteborg University" is displaying twice. Otherwise, looks excellent - thanks!
(On the subject of the search view - it'd be nice to have a function to display multiple entries of identical books, for those of us who are disorganised and know we'll enter something twice... or don't know how many duplicate paperbacks we have)
You may, or may not, want to update the entry Where does LibraryThing get its information? in the FAQ. Otherwise, though I am in the US with mostly US books, it's amazing to see all these new libraries.
andrew grey,
If you add a duplicate book via another persons catalogue, you can click on the yellow check mark, which brings up 'You have this book. Add ANOTHER copy to your library?' which certainly helps with the duplication. I haven't tried adding a duplicate through the Adds Book dialogue yet, however.
I've found that 'books I share with myself' come up, although only by experimentation (I wondered who else had an obscure 1980s Puffin and it turned out to be me, entering it twice by mistake...). A 'duplicate titles' option (like iTunes has, for instance) would be very helpful.
I've already discovered through this whole cataloguing exercise that I have multiple copies of some erstwhile set texts; finding that I have two copies of Graham Swift's 'Shuttlecock' was rather more surprising!
A way of finding duplicates would be good, I probably am guilty of having a few.
Also the amazon.co.uk ISBN search is broken, many of the books are actually there e.g. Lonely Dead by Michael Marshall (ISBN 0007163940) can be found using the title but the ISBN returns no such book even though you can find the ISBN attached to one of the copies returned by a title search.
Tho' being mostly finished with entering my titles this is getting a bit academic.
As part of the social context of LT, it might be interesting to know which libraries are "done" and which are "works in progress" (I know, true collectors are never done, but you know what I mean). Then a support group could form around those for whom daily entry is no longer a part of their lives...
You mentioned the 'divet', but any chance of restoring the library card catalog data where we now have marc info? That was so much easier to read, and incidentally, one of the features that drew me to librarything in the first place- I like to see a card catalog card of what I am reading.
Thank You
Parelle: Sorry, what I meant was... I have a shelf of fifty-odd books behind me, catalogued. I have about a thousand in the next room, uncatalogued. I just know that when I have a weekend free to attack it, I'm going to get confused and put stuff through twice, so being able to filter it out afterwards would help. (I've not experimented with adding from people's catalogues yet)
On the other hand, I have some books that I know I have two identical (same edition) copies of; the system doesn't note anything when I add these, but being able to go back later and say "Ah, it seems I actually have two copies of [whatever], I'll weed one out and give it to someone" would be helpful.
(My current hack is to tag these "duplicate", but of course this only works for the ones I know I have two copies of...)
Librarything, you mention a Dutch library in the post, but I don't see one yet. You do know that Leuven is in Belgium, don't you? :) Anyway, thanks! I am sure it will make adding books easier for me.
It's in Belgium, but it's something like 50% Dutch, right?
That said, I should try to find one in Holland.
Various comments and suggestions from other users but just let me say thanks for a superb job and one of the two best $10s I have spent on the web (the other is Langalist).
Any hope that the Amazon booklet will work with joyo.com? Joyo.com is a mainland Chinese bookseller recently bought by Amazon.
Thanks.
I'm Israeli, and about half of my library is in Hebrew. It would be a tremendous help to me (as well as to the several dozen other Israelis signed up so far) if LT would know and query the ULI (the unified catalog of university libraries in Israel).
I have ascertained it supports Z39.50, but I guess you'd run into trouble with the native language entries. I'm here if you need any help (I design software for a living).
Here's the info on connecting to the ULI:
http://libnet.ac.il/~libnet/z39.htm
German? I'm running into German stuff in my collection, of all things. (Odd things turn up when you buy lots of old used children's books...)
I'm amazed at how many books I'm finding with one (incorrect) ISBN on the cover and another (correct or corrected) ISBN on the title sheet.
Can it be set up to search libraries until it finds an entry
How about a 're-search' option to correct entry of the wrong edition?
There's a problem with Swedish characters (å,ä,ö) when I search the Göteborg University library. Since most titles include one or more of them, it's a bit annoying.
Italian libraries are on the way. They use a different record syntax ("Unimarc" vs. "Marc21") so it requires some adaptation.
Check back later today...
PS: No dice on France. Every one-horse town in the US has an open interface to their library. Sweden, Denmark, etc.—similar. France and Germany? No way.
I was hoping to get some sort of answer to my request to add the Unified Library Index (ULI) of Israel, mentioned in my comment above.
Tim, are you still considering it?
I've just registered. Adding English books is straitghtforward and very easy. You can find almost every book! The problem is that finding Italian books is impossible!
I did a search on the internet: it seems that the best site to search for Italian books is http://www.internetculturale.it
They're claiming they have a web interface. I didn't find it. I'm going on searching. It would be nice to add an Italian search library. Thanks.
http://opac.sbn.it/ has a Z39.50 gateway. Please, add it to the search library list.
Thank you in advance.
Is Amazon Japan really working?
The bookmarklet works ok, but the search form on the Add books page comes up with no result.
I tried the title, author and isbn for an existing book (Hard‐boiled wonderland and the end of the world / Haruki Murakami) with 0 result.
I'd really love to see amazon.co.jp in full support because other similar services in Japan (booklog, hondana) don't cover English/foreign books as well as LT does.
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