Author Archive

Thursday, June 25th, 2015

For ALA 2015: Three Free OPAC Enhancements

For a limited time, LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) is offering three of its signature enhancements for free!

There are no strings attached. We want people to see how LibraryThing for Libraries can improve your catalog.

Check Library.
The Check Library button is a “bookmarklet” that allows patrons to check if your library has a book while on Amazon and most other book websites. Unlike other options, LibraryThing knows all of the editions out there, so it finds the edition your library has. Learn more about Check Library
Other Editions
Let your users know everything you have. Don’t let users leave empty-handed when the record that came up is checked out. Other editions links all your holdings together in a FRBR model—paper, audiobook, ebook, even translations.
Lexile Measures
Put MetaMetrics’ The Lexile Framework® for Reading in your catalog, to help librarians and patrons find material based on reading level. In addition to showing the Lexile numbers, we also include an interactive browser.

Easy to Add

LTFL Enhancements are easy to install and can be added to every major ILS/OPAC system and most of the minor ones. Enrichments can be customized and styled to fit your catalog, and detailed usage reporting lets you know how they’re doing.

See us at ALA. Stop by booth 3634 at ALA Annual this weekend in San Francisco to talk to Tim and Abby and see how these enhancements work.

If you need a free pass to the exhibit hall, details are in this blog post.

Sign up

We’re offering these three enhancements free, for at least two years. We’ll probably send you links showing you how awesome other enhancements would look in your catalog, but that’s it.

Find out more http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries or email Abby Blachly at abby@librarything.com.

Labels: alaac15, Lexile measures, librarything for libraries, ltfl

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015

ALA 2015 in San Francisco (Free Passes)

Our booth. But this is Kate, not Tim or Abby. She had the baby.

Tim and I are headed to San Francisco this weekend for the ALA Annual Conference.

Visit Us. Stop by booth #3634 to talk to us, get a demo, and learn about all the new and fun things we’re up to with LibraryThing for Libraries!

Stay tuned this week for more announcements of what we’ll be showing off. No, really. It’s going to be awesome.

Get in Free. In the SF area and want to go to ALA? We have free exhibit only passes. Click here to sign up and get one. It will get you just into the exhibit hall, not the conference sessions themselves.

Labels: ala, alaac15

Monday, February 9th, 2015

New “More Like This” for LibraryThing for Libraries

We’ve just released “More Like This,” a major upgrade to LibraryThing for Libraries’ “Similar items” recommendations. The upgrade is free and automatic for all current subscribers to LibraryThing for Libraries Catalog Enhancement Package. It adds several new categories of recommendations, as well as new features.

We’ve got text about it below, but here’s a short (1:28) video:

What’s New

Similar items now has a See more link, which opens More Like This. Browse through different types of recommendations, including:

Similar items
More by author
Similar authors
By readers
Same series
By tags
By genre

You can also choose to show one or several of the new categories directly on the catalog page.

Click a book in the lightbox to learn more about it—a summary when available, and a link to go directly to that item in the catalog.

Rate the usefulness of each recommended item right in your catalog—hovering over a cover gives you buttons that let you mark whether it’s a good or bad recommendation.

Try it Out!

Click “See more” to open the More Like This browser in one of these libraries:

Find out more

Find more details for current customers on what’s changing and what customizations are available on our help pages.

For more information on LibraryThing for Libraries or if you’re interested in a free trial, email abby@librarything.com, visit http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries, or register for a webinar.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, recommendations, similar books

Friday, June 27th, 2014

Sneak peek: new and expanded recommendations!

New and expanded recommendations will be coming soon to LibraryThing for Libraries!

We’re demoing this now at ALA (Tim and KJ are set up at booth 1247, stop by), but here’s a sneak peek, showing how similar books can be expanded and broken down to see different types of recommendations, like more by the same author, recommendations by readers, books in a similar genre, recommendations by tag, similar authors, and more.

This is an improvement to our existing similar items recommendations, and will be available for no additional cost to all libraries using similar items (part of the Catalog Enhancement package)! Stay tuned for an official release soon.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, recommendations, similar books

Tuesday, June 24th, 2014

LibraryThing in Vegas for ALA

Going to the ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas this weekend? So are we! LibraryThing for Libraries will have a booth in the Technology Pavilion (that’s row 1200, booth #1247).

Stop by and say hi to Tim and KJ, and get a demo of our LTFL products, including some exciting new improvements to our recommendations feature. (Stay tuned for an official announcement.)

Are you in the area and want a free pass just to the exhibit hall? We can help! Click here to get an exhibits-only pass.

Labels: ala, ala2014

Tuesday, September 10th, 2013

Show off your reviews in Facebook

Our new LTFL Reviews Facebook Pagetab feature lets you display recent reviews that have been written in your catalog right in Facebook—where your patrons are. This is a free update to any library that subscribes to our Reviews Enhancement. Make the most out of the reviews your patrons are writing and proudly show them off!

You can set it to show all recent reviews, or filter by category—show just the “staff picks” or “back to school” category you might have set up.

LibraryThing for Libraries Reviews Enhancement is a great addition to your library catalog—letting patrons rate and review right within your OPAC. You can also share reviews with hundreds of other libraries that use the service, as well as draw from over a million hand-vetted user reviews written by LibraryThing.com members.

The Reviews Facebook Pagetab feature dovetails nicely with the last feature we added: social media integration—allowing patrons to sign in with and post their reviews to Facebook and Twitter.

More: Reviews Blog Widget

a reviews blog widget

While we’re on the subject of showing off reviews, the Reviews Enhancement also comes with a reviews blog widget, which lets you display new reviews anywhere (not just on Facebook!). Try adding a widget to your library’s homepage or blog to highlight the activity in your catalog. See for example the homepage of the Cass District Library, the blog of City of Hayward Public Library, or how the City of Port Phillip Library shows off “recent reviews from our catalogue.” Like the Facebook Pagetab, this feature also comes free with a subscription to the Reviews Enhancement!

Instructions on creating reviews widgets are here.

How to get Reviews in Facebook

If your library currently subscribes to the Reviews Enhancement, it’s quite easy to bring reviews into Facebook. Instructions to get started are here.

If you don’t yet subscribe to Reviews, just let me know if you’d be interested in a free trial! (email abby@librarything.com).

Labels: book reviews, facebook, librarything for libraries, ltfl, LTFL Reviews, new features, reviews, social media, social networking

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

Book Display Widgets in Facebook

This new feature allows you to use our fantastic and versatile Book Display Widgets within Facebook. Add a Book Display Widget tab to your library’s Facebook page to easily show off new books, staff picks, featured collections, and more.

Check it out. Give it a try on our fake library Facebook page, here. If this were connected to a real library, clicking on a book would open to that item’s bib page in the catalog.

Set it up. If you already subscribe to Book Display Widgets, this is a free addition! Just read here for how to set up widgets on your library’s Facebook page. On that same page you’ll see a link to a screencast to help you get set up.

Learn more. Interested in Book Display Widgets for your library? Email me (abby@librarything.com) with any questions about this or any of the LibraryThing for Libraries products. To subscribe, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Labels: Book Display Widgets, librarything for libraries

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Reviews Enhancement with Social Media Integration

We are very pleased to announce an upgrade to our LibraryThing for Libraries Reviews Enhancement—social media integration.

The Reviews Enhancement lets your patrons rate and review items directly within your catalog. But it also comes loaded with reviews to start! You can share reviews with over 200 libraries who also use the service and draw from over 950,000 hand-vetted user reviews written by LibraryThing.com members. But we’re constantly improving, and we’ve just released the following new features!

Social media integration

Sign in with Facebook or Twitter. Your patrons can now login to write reviews in your catalog using their Facebook or Twitter accounts, or they can continue to use the “reviews account” as usual. They will also be able to link an existing reviews account to their Twitter or Facebook login, for easy access in the future. (Simply log into an existing reviews account, click to account settings, and then connect.)
Post reviews to Facebook and Twitter. Once a patron’s reviews account is linked, they also have the ability to tweet the review they just wrote in your catalog, and to post it to Facebook. This is great for everyone. The patron gets to show their friends what they’re reading at the library they love—and your library gets fantastic visibility!

The links from Facebook and Twitter drive people back into your catalog, to discover even more of your collection.

Rating without reviewing

Just to sweeten the pot, we’ve added one more feature in here: the ability to rate a book with stars without having to write a review. Some people prefer to just rate, and we’ve made that possible.

How to get it

If your library currently subscribes to the Reviews Enhancement, and you want to make sure your patrons can take advantage of these improvements, you have to do… nothing, unless you want to turn social media integration off! If you’d like to disable this, just log into your LibraryThing for Libraries admin account, and go to the Configuration > Reviews page. At the bottom, you’ll see an option to disable social media integration. Toggle that, and the ability to sign in with and post to Twitter and Facebook will disappear from your catalog.

Learn more. If you’d like to subscribe to Review Enhancements, get a free trial, or just learn more: Email me (abby@librarything.com). To subscribe, contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Come see us at CIL. Tim and I (Abby) are at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington DC this week—stop by the exhibit hall to see us!

Labels: facebook, librarything for libraries, ltfl, reviews, social media, twitter

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

Improvements to Book Display Widgets

We’ve had a fantastic response to our newest LibraryThing for Libraries product, Book Display Widgets. Book Display Widgets were envisioned as a way for libraries to create virtual book displays—to show off specific collections and to highlight particular titles. Importantly, we also wanted Book Display Widgets to be easy for libraries to create and to update.

And we want to make it even better! We’ve just implemented several new features:

Multi-widgets

(Note: This is a sample widget. If you were using this in a real library, then each book would link to the book record in the catalog when clicked.)

Our new multi-widget format saves on space by giving you the ability to showcase multiple widgets in one area. Just click header titles to switch between widgets.

Our example above is an assorted collection of types of widgets, but the possibilities are endless. You can imagine this being useful for showing a collection of widgets with new books, new DVDs, new children’s books, etc. Or a multi-widget that displays several different widgets full of staff picks. Or one that shows off all the different nominees for various book awards being chosen this month. Book Display Widgets provide the structure for anything you can think up!

Vertical display

This new vertical display option is great for use on pages with side columns that you want to populate—like on LibGuides, for example.

Two display types now offer the vertical option—carousel and scrolling. We’ve also added in a shelf or no-shelf option for the carousel display (previously it was only available with a shelf background).

Learn more

We’ve made a short (less than a minute, I promise) video, showing how truly easy it is to create a widget.

See our Showcase page for sample widgets in each display style, and to get inspiration.

What do you think? Let us know if you have any other suggestions (email abby@librarything.com), we’re always open to adding and improving!

Labels: Book Display Widgets, librarything for libraries, ltfl

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

LTFL adds an Australian server!

For a company based in the United States, LibraryThing for Libraries has a surprisingly large number of library customers in Australia and New Zealand. For months we’ve been working on our infastructure to ensure that our data loads as fast as possible in those catalogues on the other side of the world. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve brought live our first server located just outside of Sydney, Australia!

This change means that the LibraryThing for Libraries data won’t have to travel around the world, so it will load considerably faster in each catalogue. Light can travel around the world 7.5 times in a second. But even 133 milliseconds isn’t nothing, and with all the other stuff that goes on, the internet never goes that fast. Sydney may not be right next door to all our Australian libraries, but it’s a lot closer than Boston, Massachusetts.(1)

Of the libraries that have switched to the Australian server so far, we’re seeing speed increases of about 100%—that is, if you’re in Australia, LibraryThing for Libraries’ load time has been cut in half! (Note that because LibraryThing for Libraries loads from your browser, if you hit these libraries from the US, you’ll find them slower—slow like Australia used to be.)

Currently the Australian server is running the catalogue enrichment (Ratings and reviews, Tags, Similar Books, Series, Awards, Shelf Browse, Stack Map, Other Editions, and Lexile Measures.), BookPsychic, and our new Book Display Widgets.

Up next, we’ll be working on moving libraries on Library Anywhere, our mobile product, over to the new server!

Let me know if your library (in Australia or New Zealand) subscribes to LTFL and needs assistance in moving to the new server. Email abby@librarything.com.

1. For now we’re going to hold off on a “LibraryThing Europe” server. The connections from the East Coast to Europe are very fast, and Europe is closer, so Europeans experience only lag by a hundred milliseconds or so.

Labels: australia, librarything for libraries