Archive for October, 2014

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

NEW: Annotations for Book Display Widgets

Our Book Display Widgets is getting adopted by more and more libraries, and we’re busy making it better and better. Last week we introduced Easy Share. This week we’re rolling out another improvement—Annotations!

Book Display Widgets is the ultimate tool for libraries to create automatic or hand-picked virtual book displays for their home page, blog, Facebook or elsewhere. Annotations allows libraries to add explanations for their picks.

Station Eleven

Some Ways to Use Annotations

1. Explain Staff Picks right on your homepage.
Column McCann
2. Let students know if a book is reserved for a particular class.
Semiotics
3. Add context for special collections displays.
Blueberries for Sal

How it Works

Check out the LibraryThing for Libraries Wiki for instructions on how to add Annotations to your Book Display Widgets. It’s pretty easy.

Interested?

Watch a quick screencast explaining Book Display Widgets and how you can use them.

Find out more about LibraryThing for Libraries and Book Display Widgets. And sign up for a free trial of either by contacting ltflsupport@librarything.com.

Labels: Book Display Widgets, librarything for libraries, new feature, new features, widgets

Tuesday, October 14th, 2014

Send us a programmer, win $1,000 in books.

We just posted a new job post Job: Library Developer at LibraryThing (Telecommute).

To sweeten the deal, we are offering $1,000 worth of books to the person who finds them. That’s a lot of books.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the local, chain or online bookseller of your choice.

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired full-time, not part-time, contract or for a trial period. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. The contact must happen in the next month. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are eligible to win, provided they aren’t work contacts. Tim is not.

» Job: Library Developer at LibraryThing (Telecommute)

Labels: jobs

Tuesday, October 14th, 2014

Job: Library Developer at LibraryThing (Telecommute)

Code! Code! Code!

LibraryThing, the company behind LibraryThing.com and LibraryThing for Libraries, is looking to hire a top-notch developer/programmer.

We like to think we make “products that don’t suck,” as opposed to much of what’s developed for libraries. We’ve got new ideas and not enough developers to make them. That’s where you come in.

The Best Person

  • Work for us in Maine, or telecommute in your pajamas. We want the best person available.
  • If you’re junior, this is a “junior” position. If you’re senior, a “senior” one. Salary is based on your skills and experience.

Technical Skills

  • LibraryThing is mostly non-OO PHP. You need to be a solid PHP programmer or show us you can become one quickly.
  • You should be experienced in HTML, JavaScript, CSS and SQL.
  • We welcome experience with design and UX, Python, Solr, and mobile development.
shutterstock_59784454

The highly-photogenic LibraryThing staff only use stock photos ironically.

What We Value

  • Execution is paramount. You must be a sure-footed and rapid coder, capable of taking on jobs and finishing them with attention and expedition.
  • Creativity, diligence, optimism, and outspokenness are important.
  • Experience with library data and systems is favored.
  • LibraryThing is an informal, high-pressure and high-energy environment. This puts a premium on speed and reliability, communication and responsibility.
  • Working remotely gives you freedom, but also requires discipline and internal motivation.

Compensation

  • Gold-plated health insurance.
  • Cheese.

How To Apply

  • We have a simple quiz, developed back in 2011. If you can do it in under five minutes, you should apply for the job! If not, well, wasn’t that fun anyway?
  • To apply, send a resume. Skip the cover letter, and go through the blog post in your email, responding to the tangibles and intangibles bullet-by-bullet.
  • Also include your solution to the quiz, and how long it took you. Anything under five minutes is fine. If it takes you longer than five minutes, we won’t know. But the interview will involve lots of live coding.
  • Feel free to send questions to tim@librarything.com, or Skype chat Tim at LibraryThingTim.
  • Please put “Library developer” somewhere in your email subject line.

Labels: jobs

Tuesday, October 7th, 2014

NEW: Easy Share for Book Display Widgets

LibraryThing for Libraries is pleased to announce an update to our popular Book Display Widgets.

Introducing “Easy Share.” Easy Share is a tool for putting beautiful book displays on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, email newsletters and elsewhere. It works by turning our dynamic, moving widgets into shareable images, optimized for the service you’re going to use them on.

Why would I want an image of a widget?

Dynamic widgets require JavaScript. This works great on sites you control, like a library’s blog or home page. But many sites, including some of the most important ones, don’t allow JavaScript. Easy Share bridges that gap, allowing you to post your widgets wherever a photo or other image can go—everywhere from Facebook to your email newsletters.

How do I find Easy Share?

To use Easy Share, move your cursor over a Book Display Widget. A camera icon will appear in the lower right corner of the widget. Click on that to open up the Easy Share box.

How can I share my widgets?

You can share your widget in three ways:

  1. Download. Download an image of your widget. After selecting a size, click the “down” arrow to download the image. Each image is labeled with the name of your widget, so you can find it easily on your computer. Upload this image to Facebook or wherever else you want it to go.
  2. Link. Get a link (URL) to the image. Select the size you want, then click the link icon to get a link to copy into whatever social media site you want.
  3. Dynamic. “Dynamic” images change over time, so you can place a “static” image somewhere and have it change as your collection changes. To get a dynamic image, go to the edit page for a widget. Use the link there to embed this image into your website or blog. Dynamic widgets update whenever your widget updates. Depending on users’ browser “caching” settings, changes may or may not happen immediately. But it will change over time.

You can also download or grab a link to a image of your widget from the widget edit page. Under the preview section, click “Take Screenshot.” You can see our blog post about that feature here.

Check out the LibraryThing for Libraries Wiki for more instructions.

Interested?

Find out more about LibraryThing for Libraries and Book Display Widgets. And sign up for a free trial of either by contacting ltflsupport@librarything.com.

Labels: Book Display Widgets, new feature, new features, widgets