Welcome Catalonians!
This weekend saw a huge surge in registration on cat.LibraryThing.com, our Catalan-language subsite—fully 1/5 of new members on Saturday.
The surge followed brief coverage on a Catalan news site, complete with a short video about us (see Google translation*). The story even got into the Legacy Library project.**
I hope we can encourage our Catalan visitors to stay, and help improve the site for themselves and others. Catalan has an exceedingly rich literary tradition and no doubt hundreds of thousands of bibliophiles. But you're not going to find many Catalan books on Amazon and the sites that use it. LibraryThing, with access to over 690 libraries, including a union catalog of Catalonian universities, is an ideal place for Catalan-speakers to assemble, catalog their books and talk about literature.
So, Catalan speakers, apart from a president of LibraryThing who can write in Catalan***, what do you want? Are there any Catalan programmers out there who want to lend a hand in exchange for good will from your compatriots and cat.librarything.com revenues? (Seriously. We're never going to get rich off this stuff. But we might get even more interesting.)
*Google does Catalan now? Wonderful.
**Wouldn't it be great to get the libraries of some famous Catalonians? Searches turned up a handful of printed catalogs in or about Catalan and the closely-related Occitan: 1, 2, 3, 4.
***We do have you surrounded, though. Abby has good French, Chris Italian, Giovanni Spanish and my Latin is decent.
The surge followed brief coverage on a Catalan news site, complete with a short video about us (see Google translation*). The story even got into the Legacy Library project.**
I hope we can encourage our Catalan visitors to stay, and help improve the site for themselves and others. Catalan has an exceedingly rich literary tradition and no doubt hundreds of thousands of bibliophiles. But you're not going to find many Catalan books on Amazon and the sites that use it. LibraryThing, with access to over 690 libraries, including a union catalog of Catalonian universities, is an ideal place for Catalan-speakers to assemble, catalog their books and talk about literature.
So, Catalan speakers, apart from a president of LibraryThing who can write in Catalan***, what do you want? Are there any Catalan programmers out there who want to lend a hand in exchange for good will from your compatriots and cat.librarything.com revenues? (Seriously. We're never going to get rich off this stuff. But we might get even more interesting.)
*Google does Catalan now? Wonderful.
**Wouldn't it be great to get the libraries of some famous Catalonians? Searches turned up a handful of printed catalogs in or about Catalan and the closely-related Occitan: 1, 2, 3, 4.
***We do have you surrounded, though. Abby has good French, Chris Italian, Giovanni Spanish and my Latin is decent.
Labels: catalan, internationalization
posted by Tim at 2:59 AM
16 Comments:
Thank you! We are a little but active community.
Some of the catalan members of LibraryThing have talked about it on their blogs, and last friday one of them gave a talk on Librarything and sharing books on Internet.
"We're never going to get rich off this stuff. But we might get even more interesting."
I think that neatly sums up the LT philosophy, right there. :)
Catalonians? Catalans!
It's nice to receive such a warm welcome. Thanks a lot! :-)
BTW would it be possible to be allowed again to link directly to profiles and works, etc on Catalan site (http://cat.librarything.com)? This would be wonderful!
Both Catalans and Catalonians are okay in English. I suppose Catalans would be better, as it's a demonym, not a Spanish region?
If Wales is a British region...
It's been great for me to find Librarything! I hope the Catalan community will be very active, and I'll try to contribute as much as I can.
I'm so impressed. That's kind of exactly what I was looking forward for a long time! Thanks lads!
This is the global village indeed! I loved that LT had already a small group of Catalan LThingers :)
Why today, the catalan homepage don't work?
http://cat.librarything.com/
Works great for me. What are you seeing?
@Tim: It shows me the error:
"Failed to get a read connection to the database."
Hi Tim! I understand you're offering free accounts to catalan speakers. That almost seems a miracle, considering the way catalan has been regarded during the last decades (if not centuries...)! Your initiative is very much appreciated.
I'm a catalan speaker and I'd be very happy to acquire a free account, if that would be possible. What would I have to do?
Thank you in advance!
Hola,
Si vols un compte gratuït per un any, passa per aquí i deixa'ns un correu-e per enviar-te el codi, si us plau.
Last month I had my first encounter with Catalá during a visit to Barcelona (and my first time in Catalonia).
I came back with many enjoyable impressions, some that chimed with my own experience in Wales (I learnt to say "No sóc Anglés, sóc Gal.les!")and came back with a wonderful collection of poetry by Joan Margarit, 'Barcelona Amor Final' - but could not find this searching on any of the libraries (although it can be found through Google) and I entered the details manually. Will it be possible for me to to link through to the Catalan section of LibraryThing and search there, from my present account?
And what about a Welsh language version of LibraryThing - we too have a very, very rich literary tradition for a small nation.
There *is* a Welsh version. It needs work on the home page, but the interior is mostly translated.
http://cym.librarything.com/
PS: Not only is there a Welsh version, but I even made a Welsh flag all by myself—the flag package I had didn't give me either Wales or Catalonia.
Ardderchog! Wonderful - Diolch/Thanks.
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