Nine million books / hiring reminder
Yesterday we hit nine million books cataloged. We're plan to make a HUGE deal out of ten million—a super-duper book pile contest, games, prizes, hay rides, a moon walk—but I'll let nine million slide with the following:
My apologies on some projects (author disambiguation, search) taking too long. We're pretty consumed with the job hunt right now. We did just hire a new developer so once we can get back to developing, we're going to gallop.
- Going from eight million to nine million took less than a month. We're speeding up!
- The book nine million was the espionage thriller Triple by Ken Follett. It was added by long-time foxsilver, who gets a free gift account for his luck.
- If LibraryThing were a "real" library, we'd now be the 10th largest in the country (ALA fact sheet)
My apologies on some projects (author disambiguation, search) taking too long. We're pretty consumed with the job hunt right now. We did just hire a new developer so once we can get back to developing, we're going to gallop.
posted by Tim at 2:20 PM
26 Comments:
I sure could use some Boredom Insurance. Shame that my systems administration is mostly Mac OS. Guess that's why I'm one of the unsung heroes of the support world.
Personally, I find the number of titles catalogued even more impressive.
//JJ
Tim -- Let me know when you need to hire someone who is grossly ignorant of anything inside a computer (isn't it just magic?) but who loves books and reading. I promise not to take any sick days.
Johan: I hear you, but titles are a very wiggly thing. We have a definition in the "works" system, but nobody else shares it. We could perhaps lists unique ISBNs, although the system doesn't think of titles that way.
Kageeh. Thanks for the offer. How about weekends? We don't take them... :)
I have been casting about for ideas how users could help. I want to think of some ideas that are non-exploitative. Meetups would be one, I think.
Chad: Does Mac OS even NEED systems administration? It just works!
Not related to this post, but I just got an email from the National Library of Australia telling me Abby's going to be a speaker at a forum in April. May have to see if I can get down to Canberra.
Posting this here just because it's live and current: Tim, I've not been paying attention to the LT Google group for a while and it looks defunctish. Where's the best place to send bug reports these days?
(Suddenly my profile is taking up space in the right column telling me how many books I share with myself, which raises interesting philosophical questions but probably wasn't intended?)
Patchen
alasen - Australia, here I come!
Patchen - Tim took care of the messed up profile page, so that should be all set now. Oh, and bug reports can be emailed to any of us, or posted in the bug collectors group.
tangential to bus, and related to the momentary status -
I say, when the site goes down, perhaps you should have a pile of fix-it books up next to the message :)
Maybe a new competition is needed to create an image to sit beside the "site offline" text during maintenance :-)
Local auction site TradeMe uses a little kiwi bird (their logo) tripping over the power cord occasionally :-P
LT's library is spread over the planet, so surely only part of it counts as a US library. (But if you've got Internet access in Burkina Faso, then it's probably the bioggest library in Burkina Faso!)
Tim --
Looking at how far LT has come (I became a member when a library of 800 books was a lot) I can't help wondering if it might be time to drop the 'beta' status....
LT isn't beta - it's the REAL DEAL!
It is definately still Beta everywhere I look there is a workman with power tools, While a builder explains to me why he is gonig to have to take this bit down and start again.
Yeah. I need to write a post about beta. We made the top 10 in the "Museum of Modern Betas" a whimsically-named site that tracks buzz on betas. I plan to keep LT in beta forever. Beta means a license to explore and expand--a notice to the user that things may chance, and that's okay--and we have a lot of that left to do...
Tim -- What's a weekend? It's just another two days of 24 hours each.
I forgot to mention that I am also spectacularly uncreative. Tell me what to do and I will do it and then suggest improvements in efficiency.
This is well off topic but I don't know where else to put it.
I just wanted to say that your downtime notice (Sunday 14 Jan 3.55pm I think) was very friendly. It was a bit like one of those notices on shop doors: back in five minutes, but much more accurate.
No inconvenience at all, just time to make a cup of tea before entering more of my books. But thanks for the information, not like some big companies I won't bother to mention.
This is well off topic but I don't know where else to put it.
I just wanted to say that your downtime notice (Sunday 14 Jan 3.55pm I think) was very friendly. It was a bit like one of those notices on shop doors: back in five minutes, but much more accurate.
No inconvenience at all, just time to make a cup of tea before entering more of my books. But thanks for the information, not like some big companies I won't bother to mention.
Tim said:
"I plan to keep LT in beta forever. Beta means a license to explore and expand--a notice to the user that things may change, and that's okay--and we have a lot of that left to do."
So what site wouldn't always be a beta, given that definition? I suppose a site that was developed and then ran out of funding would just be static, but nearly every popular website will "explore and expand" and will "change and that's okay" as new functionality is envisioned, requested, and built.
If it's true that all sites are beta, then, why stick the label on there, wasting valuable screen space? If all websites are beta, then it's a bit of a meaningless label. Why not add a stamp that says "you are on the world-wide web"?
Perhaps beta signals more a style of developing and expanding the website where you will encounter the workmen that SimonW11 encounters (I don't see them, though), and occassional glitches associated with the new tools. To me though, this means that there are "beta aspects" to the site, but your site, in its core functionality, seems beyond beta to me.
I'd like to see the beta taken off the LibraryThing logo, and see it instead on pages like the Unsuggester that are new, perhaps not bullet-proof, but open to feedback and will be changed and improved.
I look forward to your blog post on the beta status for more of your thoughts, Tim, as well as all you Thingamabrarians out there who read this blog.
When I hear/see the word beta I think
unstable
doesn't work properly
bugs are prevalent
taking it for a test drive
should I risk it
where's the non-beta version
etc
I don't usually think of it in the positive sense that you wrote:
Beta means a license to explore and expand--a notice to the user that things may change, and that's okay--and we have a lot of that left to do."
Thankfully LibraryThing doesn't fall into my idea of what "beta" is!!!!
I absolutely love LibraryThing, and am also a believer in "word-of-mouth advertising". I'm thus spreading the word!! I've even mentioned LibraryThing in emails and birthday letters to friends because it is something I get excited about, and I am sure other book lovers will too.
Well, I think there are more bugs than you think...
But thanks for your help spreading the word. If many users shared your opinion of beta—which I'd be interested to hear—then we should take the notice down. As much as we want to signal rapid change and even (hopefully non-fatal) bugs, we don't want to repel users.
thelee and Michelle summed up what I was getting at with my comments about being 'beta.'
For instance, I was a beta tester for Windows Vista and Office 2007. To me, that says that they they're still not ready to release to the public, even though I use Office 2007 extensively even for production work.
In fact, I've tried to plug LT on a pastoral-ministry forum I'm part of; pastors, who generally are voracious readers, seem like great candidates for LT. Problem is, I've heard things like, "looks like a great idea - let me know when and if they ever actually release it."
I like your meaning for 'beta' - I'm just afraid it's not the commonly understood meaning, and I'm concerned that the trm may put off some people who otherwise would love it.
I feel I have to agree, being a software developer myself, and hearing what people say and think of beta software you might be alianating many people. My suggestion if you want something to signify change use 'delta'. What do you think of that?
readafew
Tim, given the negative connotations of the term "beta", what about replacing it with the phrase "Always exploring, expanding and changing"? That way, you get rid of the negative while keeping what you want to do with the site in front of the public. Just a possible suggestion to give everyone what they want!
Hmmm, I thought people would be commenting about being the user to log the 10,000,000th book. Am I the only LT user obsessed with being one of the 'million members'?
I've tried now for 6, 7, 8 AND 9. Between tracking the books entered per day, determining the rate that is increasing and then checking in on the actual number cataloged, I spend too much time on Zeitgeist. I'm even saving books aside each time for when the day draws near to each million mark.
I was close once, had about a dozen I entered sporadically through the night, starting at about 11pm and staying awake till after 5am, but some new user who'd just joined and entered a whopping 11 books beat me out! You think I'd have learned and let go. Hurumph! Who ever accomplished anything good by learning their lesson??
cckelly
Why not devise a new term and call LibraryThing a "gamma"?
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