LibraryThing Local explodes
This morning, three days after its official launch, LibraryThing Local passed 9,000 venues. (UPDATE: In this time some 700 members have entered more libraries, bookstores, fairs and other venues than our closest competitor in this space assembled in ten months of work, drawing mostly on chain bookstores and publicists.
Much remains to be done. New York City looks like it's been attacked by a swarm of smurf bees, but Athens, Greece is still pretty empty. And events—while over 1,100 now—aren't growing as fast as we'd like. (I blame a joyless, balky interface, which will soon be fixed.)
LibraryThing Local's success follows on LibraryThing's series project which, in two weeks assembled more book series data than the largest commercial supplier of this data.
Together, I think these suggest something important: The most powerful agents in the book world today are regular people.
LibraryThing is blessed with the most extraordinary members I have ever heard of. They'll hunker down for hours adding information for fun and to help out their fellow members. They'll engage in two- and even three-hundred message discussions over features. They make Facebook aps and browser enhancements on their own. They send us new logo designs. They send Abby postcards. They send us cookies.
They—and given the readership of this blog, probably YOU—are something else. It is a real surprise and honor to find myself developing software under these conditions. It's up to us to keep you interested and happy, and think of new things to do with what you create. It's up to you to tell us when we're falling short of that.
Labels: librarything local, members
posted by Tim at 1:56 PM
24 Comments:
I really want "Add this book to my library" from someone else's catalog to actually add THIS BOOK, not search the amazon.com engine (or others) first.
For example,
(1) I go to the library of EowynA; (2) I go to her tag "CA" (which is the collection of Compleat Anachronist http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?tag=CA&view=EowynA
She has the BEST catalog of the CA, and now I want to add my CA's by just clicking the plus sign for "Add this book to my library" and not have to do any typing and not introduce any inconsistencies or errors by entering the pamphlet information manually.
My library: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/cayswann
The libraries I'm working on for friends:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/mrenata
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/tonwen
Currently, my goal is to add CA 4, 8, 12, 15, 18, 20, 26, 46, 51, 54, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 110, 111, 114, 115, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 131, 134 to tonwen, and I'd like to do it by clicking on the links in http://www.librarything.com/catalog/EowynA because I know hers are RIGHT!! :)
Well done, all in all, LTLocal a great setup.
One slight tangent...
Have you noticed if Common Knowledge has taken a hit since Local was released to the general LTer?
To put it another way: is there only so much editing time/effort to be spent, or is there an insatiable appetite?
Can we have the option to sort LibraryThing Local entries alphabetically? It would make it a lot easier to make sure I'm not doing duplicate entries.
My bees! My precious, precious bees!
It's awesome! I visited a great little bookstore in the Reading Terminal Market on a trip to Philadelphia PA today. I might never have found without LT Local. Thank you LT!
The 'Events' function is a great idea. I suppose the next step would be to alert you when an author you own/like is doing a signing in your area.
As for keeping Events up to date, I think the long term solution has to be an effort to get bookshops/libraries themselves to update their own events list.
People are motivated to add Locations because because they have the satisfaction of adding to a permanent knowledge resource. Events quickly go out of date so updating them requires unusual commitment or a strong online community from that location.
Yes, I think you're right.
cep! I added that bookstore ("Miscellania Libri") in the Terminal in Philly. I'm so glad you found it. This is why this feature is so great.
I went to a reading tonight in SE Portland, OR that I only heard about three days ago through LT Local.
Hell yes.
Excellent!
"but Athens, Greece is still pretty empty"
Ok, ok.. we'll try to do our best. Promise!
LibraryThing Local rocks. :)
I was wondering if the wonderful staff at LibraryThing may have created a template letter we can use to introduce a bookstore or library, etc, to LT Local?
Athens seems to catch up, but Google Maps (and its name search) still sucks for many places outside of the U.S. The place finder's "by location/by name" is quite confusing, and if I search for the name of a country I find nothing at all.
A few Thingamabrarians from Quezon City, Philippines (myself included) have tried to add new locations within our vicinity, but we're stymied by how uncooperative Google Maps can be for cities that don't have a complete street layout.
If only we could view the interface as a satellite view, we could pinpoint the locations of our favorite places better.
As it is, there are three added stores/libraries for LibThingLocal in Quezon City, but they all have the same address.
Looking forward to a fix! :)
I'm hitting a problem similar to the Quezon City thingamabrarians: as I slowly add the smaller public libraries in Quebec, I've hit several cases where google maps (or sometimes, only the final location page, not the preview) places the library in the wrong city altogether. Sometimes I can adjust the street name or add the postal code to get the proper location, but this is not always possible.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I've love to know how many countries LTL covers.
@Berko: I'd wager as many countries as there are LibraryThing users in!
However, there is still a major English-language bias, which probably explain why local bookstores might get added, but rarely the local public libraries (conspicuously absent for Athen and Paris, as they were in Montreal until I got down to it).
I'm still surprised at just how many libraries there are in my own home province. I've added over 600 venues without leaving my home province (except for the Ottawa library branches, and a few French-language libraries across the country), and I've only done 2 full regional network so far: the other were non-network libraries! I'm not done with the academic libraries (only the Montreal-based unis and Laval)either.
The answer is 63. There's a little overcounting insofar as I noticed that "Gibraltar" was on the country list—and that Gibraltar bookstores didn't geocode if you used UK. But I doubt it's less than 60.
I added three local bookstores and let one know by phone and email, one by email, and one not yet (not open and no email listed in phone book). Thanks you again and again and again for your grest work! Now if I can just get my little school library on the web, we can use LT for Libraries!
Fantastic notion. I am having a problem editing the web site info for my location, though. It keeps appending the new url to the older one rather than substituting it. In Firefox, anyway.
I've added some bookstores in the Pioneer Valley, but I'm stymied by Bookends in Florence (just west of Northampton). I know the address is correct, but the map shows it somewhere southwest of Boston. Can it be fixed so it shows in the right place?
LibraryThing,
I could not figure out how to leave my feedback elsewhere. I just logged on and found out that I am not able to add any more books as I have reached the "free limit" of 200 books. To enter more, I must subscribe for a yearly fee (probably auto renews unless I go and explicitly opt-out).
Unfortunately for you, I was not informed about the "free for the first 200 books" limit prior to my spending hours and hours entering the 211 books I could recall off the top of my head I had read. Perhaps your warning was "hidden" or intentionally non-obvious. For me, that is the same as not being informed. For you it is the same effect, I am departing your service.
I have absolutely no intention of paying you for the priviledge of my updating my own list of books. Are you freakin INSANE?! Good luck with your model (ROTFLMAO - still living in the 1990's with your charging models, I can see).
Just to be clear, I have deleted all of my books and intend for my account to go dormant.
Thank you for the great idea. I am saddened you chose to charge the $10 a month. I don't think I am the only client who feels this way. I am just one in a hundred that is vocal about my choice.
Jim
For a response to that comment, posted on ten blog posts, despite the fact that ever team member's email is posted on the blog and there are whole groups devoted to feedback, see http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/03/all-things-considered-does-librarything.php .
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