LibraryThing for organizations
Until now LibraryThing's terms of use prohibited non-personal accounts without permission. Individuals, couples, families and so forth were okay. Churches, schools, law firms and such were not, unless I okayed it. In truth, I granted almost all requests, so LibraryThing has quite a few of these—particularly churches and some nifty museums.
Starting today I have a two stage policy: a slightly different price structure now, followed by a move to a more thorough-going "pro" version in the future. The pro version will be better in the ways organizations care about, such as distinguishing between catalog users and people who can add to the catalog. It will also remove some of the social features, so regular users' book soulmate doesn't turn out to be an H&R Block office.
I floated a new price structure on the blog for a few days. The final price structure's quite modest, I think.
Existing non-personal accounts fall into two categories: those who asked for and received permission and those who didn't. Those who asked permission keep the rate I gave them (usually a $25 lifetime account).
Those who didn't ask get to keep it for now. I admit not everyone noticed the terms of use link—and who reads that stuff anyway?—so I'm going to let organzations of both types stay at the $10/year personal rate until their year ends. Organizations without permission that took out a lifetime account will see $15 refunded, and reversion to a $10 rate. It's going to take a while for me to straighten this out, so bear with me.
Starting today I have a two stage policy: a slightly different price structure now, followed by a move to a more thorough-going "pro" version in the future. The pro version will be better in the ways organizations care about, such as distinguishing between catalog users and people who can add to the catalog. It will also remove some of the social features, so regular users' book soulmate doesn't turn out to be an H&R Block office.
I floated a new price structure on the blog for a few days. The final price structure's quite modest, I think.
- Book clubs, knitting clubs, blog rings, etc. Use a personal account. In the future, there will some "group" features so members can have separate accounts but one joined library.
- Non-profit and not-for-profit organizations (churches, schools, clubs, classrooms). Free to 200 books. $15/year for up to 5,000 books.
- For-profit (companies, organized crime). Free to 100 books. $25/year to 500 books. $50/year to 5,000 books.
Existing non-personal accounts fall into two categories: those who asked for and received permission and those who didn't. Those who asked permission keep the rate I gave them (usually a $25 lifetime account).
Those who didn't ask get to keep it for now. I admit not everyone noticed the terms of use link—and who reads that stuff anyway?—so I'm going to let organzations of both types stay at the $10/year personal rate until their year ends. Organizations without permission that took out a lifetime account will see $15 refunded, and reversion to a $10 rate. It's going to take a while for me to straighten this out, so bear with me.
posted by Tim at 2:36 AM
11 Comments:
Presumably you are going to have some kind of flag on their profile record in the database (maybe a private, non-visible one to users) so you can manage this more easily.
If so are you thinking of changing the Zeitgeist pages a little? For example z_users.php could show the top 100 personal users and the top 25 organisations separately.
What about non-profits with more than 5000 books?
moral of the post: ask permission.
Another suggestion - sorry it's off topic. Would you consider adding a music section to LibraryThing? I'd love to catalog my CDs somewhere as well.
Nolly: Yes, ask. I'm still thinking this through.
Ananda: Yes. Medium-soon. :)
I would love a very very simple circulation feature for my personal library, so I can keep track of who I've lent books to. Maybe even get automated reminder emailed to the borrower (or at least to me), saying, hey, don't forget you've got my book.
Thank you for making us fully legal! Churches across the country will love you for giving us a feasible web-based catalog. Circ records would just be icing on the cake! - Cathlib
I am a paid up lifetime member but eventually will donate all books to my church library. They will be well over 5,000 in number. How should I plan on handling payment?
So just to be clear: if I want to start a LibraryThing account for my group bookblog as a way of keeping track of books we review & discuss, should I still ask you for permission? Or do I go ahead and sign up for a personal account now....sorry, just want to make sure I understand :)
I'm a librarian and I am interested in suggesting this to a small non-profit private school as a way to catalog their books. I haven't found a way to keep track of lending...is this here?
I'll second Anonymous' request for lending tracking. (Though I did also post a request in the Librarything groups).
Denise, there are some bits of free, open-source circulation software, but they appear to be cumbersome to implement, burdened with odd licensing, and have no data in them - you'd have to import from librarything anyway, or purchase OCLC data from wherever you purchase that from. Obviously, I'm hoping for a Librarything solution instead.
-r.
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