Archive for April, 2012

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

LTFL Library Tag Clouds

LibraryThing for Libraries has added a new feature to our Tag Browser, showing tag clouds for an entire library. Available in different “resolutions” (up to 1,000 tags), they give a nice overview of “what’s out there” in a library’s collection, and provide quick entry points to the lists for each tag.

Update: Here’s an example at the Spokane County Library System

LTFL libraries can turn the feature on and off in the Tag Configuration page. Libraries can jump right to the tag cloud with a link like:

<a href="#" onclick="LibraryThingConnector.widgets.tags.showTagCloud(); return false;">asd</a>

Labels: Uncategorized

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

LibraryThing for Libraries is faster / 600,000 reviews

Two quick news items about LibraryThing for Libraries:

1. LibraryThing for Libraries has had a big speed upgrade, coincident with some new monitoring and profile software we installed. Most noticeable has been the improvement in the pop-up/lightboxes for tagging, reviews, shelf browse, series and awards. Tag lists and shelf browse saw cuts of up to 90%, moving them from “rather pokey” to “quite speedy.”

On-page enhancements also sped up about 20%. Although they average less than 200 milliseconds (0.20 seconds) already, and do not hold up a library’s page, we think it’s important to keep them as speedy as possible.

2. LibraryThing for Libraries hit 600,000 professionally-vetted reviews. We’re working through something of a backlog, so expect to see 700,000 very soon.

3. LibraryThing for Libraries now has its own Twitter account, @LTforLibraries. Follow us for more information like this!

Labels: LTER, LTFL Reviews, shelf browse