Let your reviews go!
Before now, it was never really clear what LibraryThing could or couldn't do with your reviews. Unlike other such venues we've never had a "do anything" clause, although cynical members probably assumed we did. Now that we have some opportunities, we'd love to show some reviews outside of the site.
But they're your reviews, so you decide where they can go. We're giving you three options:
If you don't decide by December 1, we will default you to unrestricted use. In a day or two—once I do the code—all members who have posted a review will receive a message about this. New people will get a message when they post their first review. Whatever you choose, if your library itself is private, your reviews will be private too.
I'm in the process of writing protections into the TOS, eg., that reviews not be changed in any way. (I think I'm going to allow obscuring of swear words, like f**k.) I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any other concerns. LibraryThing won't be DOING anything for some time, and we want to do this carefully, and listen to what people think, as we usualy do.
Why are we doing this? LibraryThing users have built up quite an impressive corpus of book reviews (almost 100,000). Our focus on books as books—not on selling books—together with the lack of any "review rules" has given rein to a lot of excellent writing.
In the last few months, Abby and I have been going to library conferences and meeting a lot of librarians. We've learned that libraries are eager to show more information in their catalog—particularly reviews and recommendations. The few already doing so are paying through the nose for this data. Often this means snippets from "professional reviews" assembled by the publisher for their ONIX feed and repackaged and resold to libraries by data companies. (Library patrons are, I think, generally unaware when reviews come from the book's publishers!) Amazon of course provides user reviews, but only if a library is willing to make itself a sales channel in return. Commercial concerns, such as Abebooks, are also interested in showing reviews on their sites, and obviously can't use Amazon's.
So, we'd love to open up LibraryThing's reviews—to sell them, probably, although we will be underselling the data companies by a mile. By allowing us to do it, you'll be helping LibraryThing financially, and giving your opinions wider currency to boot.
In case it's said, LibraryThing is not turning evil. Letting your review go is your choice, not ours. If you ever reviewed a book on an online bookseller you agreed to unlimited distribution and modification. One of LibraryThing's competitors has a TOS that asserts COPYRIGHT over user reviews. (Prima noctis too, probably.) LibraryThing wants to give you control over your reviews. If you want to help us out, great. If not, and we're very grateful you want them on LibraryThing. We'd kiss you if we could.
Instead, post here or come talk on Talk.
But they're your reviews, so you decide where they can go. We're giving you three options:
- Keep reviews on LibraryThing only
- Allow LibraryThing to give your reviews to non-commercial entities (libraries mostly)
- Allow LibraryThing to give reviews to commercial entities (booksellers, publishers, authors, street gangs)
If you don't decide by December 1, we will default you to unrestricted use. In a day or two—once I do the code—all members who have posted a review will receive a message about this. New people will get a message when they post their first review. Whatever you choose, if your library itself is private, your reviews will be private too.
I'm in the process of writing protections into the TOS, eg., that reviews not be changed in any way. (I think I'm going to allow obscuring of swear words, like f**k.) I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any other concerns. LibraryThing won't be DOING anything for some time, and we want to do this carefully, and listen to what people think, as we usualy do.
Why are we doing this? LibraryThing users have built up quite an impressive corpus of book reviews (almost 100,000). Our focus on books as books—not on selling books—together with the lack of any "review rules" has given rein to a lot of excellent writing.
In the last few months, Abby and I have been going to library conferences and meeting a lot of librarians. We've learned that libraries are eager to show more information in their catalog—particularly reviews and recommendations. The few already doing so are paying through the nose for this data. Often this means snippets from "professional reviews" assembled by the publisher for their ONIX feed and repackaged and resold to libraries by data companies. (Library patrons are, I think, generally unaware when reviews come from the book's publishers!) Amazon of course provides user reviews, but only if a library is willing to make itself a sales channel in return. Commercial concerns, such as Abebooks, are also interested in showing reviews on their sites, and obviously can't use Amazon's.
So, we'd love to open up LibraryThing's reviews—to sell them, probably, although we will be underselling the data companies by a mile. By allowing us to do it, you'll be helping LibraryThing financially, and giving your opinions wider currency to boot.
In case it's said, LibraryThing is not turning evil. Letting your review go is your choice, not ours. If you ever reviewed a book on an online bookseller you agreed to unlimited distribution and modification. One of LibraryThing's competitors has a TOS that asserts COPYRIGHT over user reviews. (Prima noctis too, probably.) LibraryThing wants to give you control over your reviews. If you want to help us out, great. If not, and we're very grateful you want them on LibraryThing. We'd kiss you if we could.
Instead, post here or come talk on Talk.
posted by Tim at 3:27 PM
35 Comments:
What if we post the same review that we have already posted on Amazon or can we now not do this?
I don't think we have any problem with it, but I should check Amazon's TOS.
There should be some method or system to encourage users to write reviews. Feedback is one of the best motivators. I would love to know that 1) people are reading my reviews and 2) they like them. It would certainly encourage me to write more and better quality reviews. But, I know LT is against review feedback, based on previous discussions. Which is strange since it's ok to rate a great work of art on a scale from 1 to 5, but considered bad to rate our little communities amateur reviews.
I'm going to post your comment over on the discussion too. I'm not dead-set against it, I just feel that it "exposes" people too much. Slamming an author is one thing. Slamming another Thingamabrarian is another. Are there other incentives possible?q
There should be the option for both a public and private review - many people want to review a book for their own database and personal thoughts and comments. But they also may want to tell other people about it in a public forum. Two very different types of reviews. It would solve any concerns about exposing ones self to public scrutiny. You can say what you want in a public forum, and also have your own private thoughts. The public forums can have community feedback about the reviews, given to libraries and authors, etc.. the private reviews remain private.
I really don't like ratings of book reviews. (I do like ratings of recipes, however!) I don't find book review ratings helpful at all. At Amazon, negative ratings are often given, not if the reviews are poorly written or are not thoughtful, but if a second person doesn't agree with the review (i.e. reviewer of the book hates the book, but rater of the review loves the book or vice versa).
Would we only be able to review books that we still have in our library? I usually either return my books to the library or give my personal books away to others after I finish reading them.
Right. What does the rating rate, the book or the review (or the person...)?
This is great. I'm a fan of anything to get reviews and ratings into the library catalog. I've been itching to hack amazon ratings into the library catalog which would work for my private use but not for in-library catalog browsing.
Thanks for being transparent with your intentions.
Hi -
After reading Mary Ellen Bates' praise of LibraryThing, I'm interested in a lifetime membership with LibraryThing, but I do not want to use PayPal to pay the membership fee (long story, but bottom line is that PayPal has a corrupted system that has been hacked and is not a reliable, risk free way to pay for things). Is there another way I can pay for the membership? Credit card over the phone, mail a check or money order, etc.?? Any way but PayPal.
Jan Bohren
ETHOS21st@aol.com
1100 Half Moon Bay
Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520
914-271-0171
Good idea: this prompts me to send the ones in my file that I've been intending to share . . motivation is a delightful stimulant! Esta 1923
Is this only for the reviews written on LT, or links too? I usually review books on my own site and link them here.
Tim, I don't mind making reviews available. My peculiar problem is that I write long, some would say overly long, reviews. I write about nonfiction and I think these works worthy of longer reviews. (I only do books I like, life is too short to waste time reviewing books one doesn't like.) These reviews of mine often have a part 1 and part 2 because I can't get them all into the space provided by LibraryThing. Should I opt out of the sharing of reviews here at LT because a Part 1 without the part 2 won't make much sense? Please advise...
pomonomo2003: Wow. I wish the site weren't down now, or I'd check out your reviews. Do your reviews get rejected somehow. Although they may not "look" their they're fitting, the box should accomodate a VERY large amount of text. I think it's browser dependent—maybe 32k? Anyway, on the database end you could drop off Moby Dick. Is it just a visual thing or are you finding problems posting long reviews?
I'm glad to hear you've been talking with librarians about making the reviews available. The vendor offerings for circulation systems and online catalogs are not especially good, and are extremely expensive. Aside from selling 'professional' reviews, at least one vendor sells images of book covers, also for a premium. I can't wait until the vendor lock-in gets broken.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. My reviews all come from Amazon.com where I reviewed books before joining your site. (LT is excellent, btw, thanks!) What happens is I copy the review into LT, press enter to upload it and it just hangs, forever. So, after cutting the review in half, I press enter - bang, it is accepted. So I've been assuming all along that there is a space limitation. I am on an Imac (OSX 10.4.8) using the Safari (2.04) browser. Does the fact that my reviews come from Amazon mean I should opt out of this program? Also, do user names stay with reviews? I am also pomonomo2003 on Amazon. For the record, I dislike the thought of other Thingamabrarians reviewing my reviews. My name appears on my reviews here, if someone wants to comment on a review I've made come to my LT page and let me hear it there.
re: Jan Bohren's post: I agree, PayPal is terrible (lots of people call it "PrayPal". There's a group called gdca (global digital currency association, I think) which has a rating system for payment systems: bronze, silver, gold, platinum ratings; it used to have a special "chlorine" rating just for PayPal, but I think it stopped listing PayPal at all now). LT needs to take e-gold.
Jan Bohren,
I paid with a money order. Just email Abby and she can let you know what other methods she can process and give you the mailing address.
So can you change your mind?
E.g. someone has 3 reviews, doesn't care what you do with 'em, then does another 200, and decides to opt out, do they then come out of your data feed, or is it once in, always in?
Instead of rating reviews how about the option a check-box to designate a review as highlight review.
It is true that on Amazon the voting system frequently turns into little more than ideological flaming. On the other hand, some reviews on librarything are more useful than others and I would like a way to sort those to the top of the list. So have a simple one option check box to indicate a review as useful; you can only vote for a review, not against it.
blue: They would be out. But I can't promise INSTANT removal from other sites.
Depends on who is doing the kissing, I suppose.
RE: Is this only for the reviews written on LT, or links too?
We wouldn't copy text from your blog, of course. We'd pass along the link-reviews, but libraries and booksellers might not want--probably wouldn't want--to include reviews that were just a link.
I continue to have a problem posting my reviews. Often it says 0 reviews even when I can edit the review I just put there...
I think the idea of have a postive review box is a good one - and I would further recommend that only reviews that have so many check marks or positives go into the shared database. Like most people, some of my reviews are more or less for me and simply a quick record of whether I liked the book and are actually my way of differentiating what I read from what I didn't. Other reviews are more serious critques of the book which were meant to be shared. By having a threshold for the sharing act there would be less "noise" in the over all review collection on line. There is certainly a lot of "noise" in the LT reviews.
Tim,
You may want to check out the reviews of librarythinger ErikaKline before you start selling reviews to commercial and non-commercial entities. I noticed her reviews when I went to my review page and looked at the sidebar giving me reviews other people had created for books in my collection.
For the vast majority of her 116 reviews, it appears that she's just cut and pasted the text from review publications such as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and others. Even though she's included attribution, I'm pretty sure that this constitutes a copyright violation, and if she chose not to opt out of the unrestricted review option, then her "reviews" would be sent out to the entities you're selling them to. And then you might be liable for copyright violation by profiting from reselling someone else's intellectual property.
I don't have a background in copyright law, so I can't say definitively whether or not this is the case. But given what I've studied about copyright in library school so far, I think this is an area for major concern. I also don't mean to pick on EricaKline, I'm sure she posted these reviews with the best of intentions. However, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal are unlikely to see it that way.
Just something you should think about before selling librarythinger reviews. . .
Oops, I think I listed this librarythinger's screen name wrong the first time. It's EricaKline
I know. It's a problem. There's a lot from Amazon too. We're going to screen automatically and by hand, I think. And maybe allow users to flag them. Strictly speaking, it's a violation of LT's terms of service too.
Someone asked earlier about copying their reviews from amazon.com. I was surprised one day when a stranger emailed me that a book review I had posted on amazon.com appeared on the abebooks.com site. I wrote to amazon but they said there was nothing they could do about it.
If it appeared on Abe, it had to be a dealer who posted it. Abe doesn't have any review system of it's own, and never had, as far as I know. It's data comes from the dealers, who can put pretty much anything up. LibraryThing isn't putting any reviews on Abe now, so it didn't come from that.
Did you email Abe about it? Is it still up? Do you want me to use my powerful, secret influence? Okay, my weak and not-so-secret suasion?
I would second the allow you to opt out with some reviews.
I would prefer it if you could decide on a review-by-review basis. Sometimes I write for the world, but other times I'd like my reviews to be a bit more private.
Also, will our names (or handles) be attached to the review? I'd prefer it if they were.
And finally, I support the idea of "cheering" useful reviews a la 43things, without the option of giving negative feedback.
After reading all your comments, I just had to go look at the Amazon.co.uk web site (where I live). I'm glad I've never reviewed anything for Amazon since these are the TOS:
"If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you
* (a) grant Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates a non-exclusive, royalty-free and fully sublicensable rights to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media; and
* (b) Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose.
You agree that the rights you grant above are irrevocable during the entire period of protection of your intellectual property rights associated with such content and material. You agree to waive your right to be identified as the author of such content and your right to object to derogatory treatment of such content."
So you're giving Amazon the right to sell your work and possibly the right to be acknowledged as the author. I think Amazon would be able to chase LibraryThing for copyright infringement for any "Amazon" reviews republished here.
Thanks for being upfront about your intentions. I've just started an account, and I'm happy to have you repackage my reviews since you're honest and open about what you're doing.
cmjb:
Nah, see the "non-exclusive" part. You've mearly granted them a very large license for your work, not the copyright.
No, I think it's clear that if it's YOUR review, it's okay. It's a non-exclusive right.
If it's NOT your review, things get tricky. If LibraryThing took the review via their API, that would certainly violate their terms. But we never use their reviews API. The question is if user A posts an Amazon review by Amazon user B.
In this case, it's CERTAINLY a copyright infringement against user B. It's not clear to me whether it's also one against Amazon, but it's wrong either way.
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