----- Forwarded by Tom Baxter/OAG on 01/22/2007 08:15 AM -----
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/21/Features/Bibliophiles__unite.shtml#
Bibliophiles, unite!
Through LibraryThing.com, you can catalog and tag your personal library -
and meet people with similar tastes.
By COLETTE BANCROFT, Times Staff Writer
Published January 21, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At LibraryThing.com, old school met new media, fell in love and birthed a
book geek's dream come true.
When Tim Spalding created the Web site, he says, he saw it as simply a
place
to catalog books.
The site allows users to enter the title, author or ISBN number of a book
they own. The site retrieves information about the specific edition of the
book, often complete with an image of the cover. Users can display their
libraries as a list or as a virtual shelf with an array of covers.
"I was doing a bunch of Web development, little ideas. I figured maybe two
or three people a day would join it, mostly my academic friends," says
Spalding, a Web publisher and former graduate student in ancient history,
Greek and Latin.
A year and a half later, LibraryThing has more than 130,000 registered
users
who have cataloged more than 9-million books. If LibraryThing were a
bricks-and-mortar-and-paper library, that collection would be the ninth
largest in the United States.
But, Spalding says, the most surprising part of the LibraryThing experience
has been its social aspect.
"I just figured people would use it as a way to organize their books, but
the first thing they did was start sending each other their URLs, saying,
'Hey, look at my library!' "
Instead of just being a virtual card catalog, the site has blossomed into a
gathering place for "people who want to be in the company of people who
love
books," Spalding says.
Cataloging up to 200 books is free; for bigger collections, users pay $10 a
year or $25 for lifetime memberships. "Five-sixths of the paying members
are
lifetime memberships," Spalding says. Some of them have cataloged more than
5,000 books.
But the book catalog is just the start. Once your library is entered,
LibraryThing tells you about other users who share your taste in literature
and lets you contact them.
LibraryThing has also become a giant virtual book club. Users have posted
110,000 reviews. Dozens of groups gather online to chat about everything
from James Joyce to manga. Some people don't even catalog their libraries,
Spalding says. "They just join the groups."
The site also allows users to create tags for their books. The most popular
are obvious, like "fiction" or "American history" and a lot of books are
tagged "unread".
But users can also create tags that identify much more specialized
categories than, say, the Library of Congress uses.
"If you're a romance reader, it's not just this big undifferentiated blob,
like it is for me," Spalding says, but a genre that contains many
distinctive subcategories.
"There's an incredible number of books tagged 'paranormal romance,' "
Spalding says. "Basically, that means 'The vampire falls in love with you.'
"
To fans, that's important. "The tags tell you what real people think this
is."
Though it began as a "little idea," LibraryThing has become a full-time job
for Spalding, 35. He lives with his wife, novelist Lisa Carey (Every
Visible
Thing), and their young son in Portland, Maine, where LibraryThing has
three
employees. One more works in Boston.
Although LibraryThing links users to book sales and swap sites, it doesn't
sell books. It does sell a few accessories.
For users who get tired of typing in their book titles, there's CueCat, a
cat-shaped barcode scanner that zaps information from book covers into
LibraryThing. Invented for a failed advertising model back in the first
dot-com boom, millions of the devices languished in warehouses until
Spalding found them and started selling them to his members. "That's been a
great success for us.
"We're part of what's called Web 2.0, and it's nice that the second wave
can
use the detritus from the first."
Members can join LibraryThing with just a user name and password. Spalding
says ensuring their privacy is important: "Many people are nervous about
the
implications of the government knowing what they're reading, or some future
employer."
But that doesn't stop them from what Spalding calls a passionate level of
involvement. "I outsourced a lot of the development to users, asked them,
'What would you like to do?' "
Among other things, members have translated the site into a dozen
languages.
Spalding sees it eventually expanding to allow catalogs of other media.
"But that's not our top priority. The bookish feel of the site is great,
and
I want to keep that as long as possible.
"There's a lot of hidden desire to talk about books."
Colette Bancroft can be reached at (727) 893-8435 or bancroft@sptimes.com.
* * *
LibraryThing.com
- The Unsuggester: Type in the title of a book you like, and it gives you
the titles of books you won't like. For example, if you love Cormac
McCarthy's Blood Meridian, you'll hate Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a
Shopaholic. (There's a Suggester, too.)
- The "Authors Who LibraryThing" list includes sex expert Susie Bright.
- LibraryThing groups include Librarians Who LibraryThing (the largest
group
at 1,484 members), Awful Lit and I Survived the Great Vowel Shift.
- Among the top 25 books with the highest ratings by members are The Book
of
Common Prayer, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes and Neil Gaiman's The
Absolute
Sandman Vol. 1.
- The top six books with the greatest number of registered copies are all
by
J.K. Rowling, with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince leading at
10,438.
Rounding out the top 10: The Da Vinci Code, 1984, The Hobbit and The
Catcher
in the Rye.
© 2007 . All Rights Reserved . St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South . St. Petersburg, FL 33701 . 727-893-8111
Tom Baxter
USAV 1967-69
http://tombaxter.livejournal.com
Tallahassee, Florida
Write on my gravestone: "Infidel, Traitor." --infidel to every church that
compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the
people.
Wendell Phillips
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why?
Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid
injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust."
Aquinas
Tom Baxter
Reference Librarian
Office of the Attorney General of Florida
PL-01 The Capitol
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-9752
850-414-3376
FAX 850-921-5784
Tom_Baxter@oag.state.fl.us
Please note that Florida has a broad public records law, and that all
correspondence to me via email may be subject to disclosure.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:46:49 PST