Check out the main blog for information on a new social-media position open at LibraryThing.
Archive for the ‘Social Cataloging’ Category
Monday, October 25th, 2010
Work at LibraryThing?
Labels: jobs, portland, Social Cataloging, social media, social networking
Saturday, January 31st, 2009
Cataloging and fun
On Thursday we introduced a silly new “meme” page called “Dead or Alive?” which listed your authors by their mortal status–alive, dead, unknown or “not a person.” (See the blog post or check out yours.) The feature drew on the birth and death dates of the authors in our Common Knowledge system, a free (Creative Commons) “fielded wiki” for miscellaneous “cataloging” information (think “Wikipedia for book info”). To move an author from the “unknown” column, members had to find their dates and enter them onto into Common Knowledge.
Here’s a chart of Common Knowledge contributions over the last month.* Can you spot the day “Dead or Alive?” went live?
As you can see, birth, death and gender edits (gender is where you mark an author as “not a person”) went through the roof when the feature was announced—from an average of 143 edits per day, to 3731 and 3584, 25 times the average. Other edits went up too—a 30% increase.
A few members joked that it was a plot to encourage contributions to Common Knowledge. It wasn’t that. I just thought it was a funny idea, but I wasn’t unaware that it would have that effect. Indeed, the upshot shows again something of a LibraryThing finding—that regular people will contribute cataloging information if you make it meaningful to them. That is, whatever incentive there is to add author information, the incentive is increased when they’re your authors, and increased again when that information does something for you. Of course, even if incentive is personal, the effect is general; you update the author because you have his or her book, but everyone else shares in the value of that update.
The way this works undercuts a common myth of “Web 2.0″—that there are all these people out there adding “user-generated content” out of altruism or an extreme mismatch between time and exciting things to do. And it cuts against an older myth, that cataloging is so boring you have to pay people to do it.
We’ve seen the same jump every time we introduced a new Common Knowledge category, and again when we made that category “come alive” in some way for members. And although the short-term jump will surely level out, the overall rate of “dead-or-alive” entries certainly not. You get more changes when the changes do something for people.
Now, of course, there’s a whole list of things this doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that LibraryThing members are doing their job well (although I suspect they are). It doesn’t mean the same would apply to much more difficult forms of cataloging, or to forms that generally presuppose professional training (ie., LCSH). And it doesn’t mean that regular people will get to the “rare stuff,” indeed it probably means that average cataloging attention is directly related to popularity of the underlying item.
Even so, pretty cool. Oh, by the way, I’m adding a feature allowing you to compare yourself to other members, which should inflame the other great motive for personal metadata—competition. After all, my library has a higher dead/alive ratio than yours!
UPDATE: Here’s the current chart, without day-norming. Notice how everything went up.
*The numbers are normed against day-related changes. Basically, we smoothed out that many more edits are made on Monday than Saturday.
Labels: cataloging, dead or alive, Social Cataloging, zombies
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
Wikimania 2008 (Alexandria, Egypt)
In other news, I’m currently on a train to New York, from which I fly to Athens, with a day-long layover, and then Alexandria, Egypt, where I am due to talk at Wikimania 2008, the annual Wikipedia/Wikimedia conference. I’m talking on “LibraryThing and Social Cataloging.”
I plan to center my talk on how LibraryThing’s social production, or “Social Cataloging,” stacks up against the Wikipedia model and similar projects. I think there are some interesting similarities, and more interesting departures. I shall post a screencast, at a minimum.
Anyone know these people? I am particularly eager to mingle with the other attendees and speakers. Apart from Brewster Kahl (Internet Archive), I hardly see a name I recognize. But I’m sure there will be some interesting conversations.
When it comes to Wikipedia, I’m no expert. My account lists some 746 edits since 2004, which probably puts me in the top percent, but my output is spotty, and I have never been obsessed with the site as some have.
Things not to say around Jimmy Wales. Worse, I am not a true believer. Of course, I think Wikipedia is extraordinary. I use it every day. When it’s works, like most pop culture, it’s an unmatched resource. But from working mostly on topics of Greek history, I have acquired a sour perspective on Wikipedia’s ability to resolve conflicts, tamp down ignorance, and cover topics which, quite simply, require more than curiosity and popular secondary sources.
Alexander the Great, for example, has seen periodic, bitter warfare on national or sexual grounds and, although randomly wonderful, with extensive hyperlinking and some exceptional tidbits, has never grown into a decent summary. It’s lumpy, unbalanced, poorly written and poorly sourced—a bright fourteen year-old child sitting next to you on a bus, telling you everything he knows.* Parts are good. Parts are bad. Parts are just off somehow—their correction requiring un-Wikipedia-esque virtues like restraint, proportionality and style. At one point I watched it closely and made substantial edits. I’ve moved on. In my opinion, if the Wiki culture and process were going to produce a good article on Alexander, they would have done so already.
If that’s too pessimistic, it’s surely true of bit players like Ada of Caria, Aristander of Telmessus or a work like the Geoponica? I think all three are passable now, but almost all the work is mine. Not only am I not scalable, but it shouldn’t work that way. Tim Spalding, a PhD drop-out whose knowledge of the Geoponica is mostly second hand, even if he does read Greek, should not be the almost sole author of the article on this rather important work.**
Anyone know Alexandria? I should have no trouble filling my layover in Athens. I’ve been a few times before, so I’ll be filling holes. But I’ve never been to Egypt.
I’ll have early mornings, nights and one day free in Alexandria. (I’m not going to try to get to Cairo and the pyramids.) I want to make the most of the time I have, and feel extremely ignorant. Although Hellenistic Alexandria was a research interest of mine, the ancient city is largely gone, and I know little about what came after. I love Cavafy, so I shall probably check out his house museum, but I am completely ignorant about Durrell, the usual touchstone. Nor is Alexandria what it was in their day–the Greeks, Jews, Albanians and other minorities have mostly left. What the modern city is like, I have no idea. I can’t count to ten in Arabic. I don’t even have a guidebook. This is the new, non-obsessive tourist me. ..
If you know the city, leave comments. Tell me where to go and I’ll tell you what I thought of it! Think of it as social production of tourist memories…
*My favorite Wikipedia criticism is surely Karen Schneider’s, best expressed with reference to Orson Scott Card’s page:
“But if you read this blog you know I have written that Wikipedia often seems more like a Secret Treehouse Club than everyone’s encyclopedia. Card’s Wikipedia page isn’t a biography, it’s an encomium by true believers who maintain fierce control over Card’s myth.”
Labels: Alexandria Egypt, Social Cataloging, Wikimania 2008, Wikimania2008

Thingology is LibraryThing's ideas blog, on the philosophy and methods of tags, libraries and suchnot.
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- máy phun phân bón on The LibraryThing programming quiz!
- Janis Jones on Book Display Widgets from LibraryThing for Libraries
- Marie Seltenrych on Book Display Widgets from LibraryThing for Libraries
- Tye Bishop on Introducing thingISBN
- Walter Clark on New group: “Books in 2025—The Future of the Book World”
Archives
- April 2020
- October 2016
- January 2016
- June 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- October 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- December 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- June 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- November 2012
- October 2012
- August 2012
- June 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
Categories
- 37Signals
- aaron swartz
- academics
- ads
- ahml
- ala
- ala 2008
- ala anaheim
- ALA midwinter
- ala2007
- ala2008
- ALA2010
- ala2014
- alaac15
- ALAMW11
- ALAMW13
- alamw2009
- ALAmw2010
- Aleph
- Alexandria Egypt
- Amazon
- amusement
- android
- apis
- app
- arl
- arlington heights
- armenian
- astroturfing
- ato
- attention
- australia
- australian
- australian tax office
- authenticity
- awards
- barcode scanning
- bea
- ben franklin
- berkman center
- bhutan
- biblios
- BIGWIG
- blogging
- book blogs
- book covers
- Book Display Widgets
- book reviews
- BookPsychic
- books
- bookstores
- booksurge
- Boston
- bowdoin
- Bowker
- branded apps
- brigadoon library
- britney spears
- business
- c.s. lewis
- canton
- cataloging
- categories
- censorship
- Charleston
- chick lit
- chris catalfo
- christmas
- CIG
- CIL
- CIL2008
- CIL2009
- CIL2010
- CIL2012
- city planning
- claremont colleges
- clay shirky
- cluetrain
- code
- codi
- cognitive cost
- collection development
- commemorations
- common knowledge
- communiation
- Computers in Libraries
- conference
- ConferenceThing
- contests
- copyright
- covers
- coverthing
- crime
- csuci
- curiosities
- cutter
- DanMARC
- david weinberger
- DDC
- dead or alive
- department of commerce
- department of defense
- department of labor
- dewey decimal
- Dewey Decimal Classification
- discovery layer
- django
- doc searls
- dr. horrible
- drm
- Durham
- Early Reviewers
- east brunswick
- ebooks
- ebpl
- EBSCOhost
- economics
- elton john
- employment
- enhancement
- Enterprise
- ereaders
- erotica
- event
- Evergreen
- everything is miscellaneous
- ExLibris
- fake steve
- federal libraries
- feedback
- flash-mob cataloging
- folksonomy
- frbr
- freedom
- fun
- future of cataloging
- future of the book
- gbs
- gene smith
- getting real
- giraffe
- gmilcs
- google book search
- groups
- guardian
- harry potter
- harvard coop
- hidden images
- hiring
- homophily
- houghton mifflin
- humor
- iBistro
- iii
- il2008
- indexing
- indiebound
- inspiration
- instruction
- international
- internet archive
- internet librarians
- internships
- interviews
- iphone app
- isbns
- it conversations
- itt tallaght
- jacob nielsen
- jason griffey
- javascript
- jeff atwood
- jobs
- JSON
- kelly vista
- kils
- kindle
- kingston
- koha
- languages
- lccn
- lccns
- LCSH
- legacies
- legacy libraries
- legacy mob
- Lexile measures
- lianza
- lianza09
- lib2.0
- liblime
- librarians
- libraries
- libraries of the dead
- library 2.0 gang
- library anywhere
- library blogging
- library journal
- library of congress
- library of congress report
- library of the futurue
- library science
- library technology
- librarycampnyc2007
- librarything
- librarything for libraries
- LibraryThing for Publishers
- librarything local
- linden labs
- LIS
- los gatos
- LTER
- ltfl
- LTFL categories
- ltfl libraries
- LTFL Reviews
- maine
- marc
- marcthing
- marié digby
- mashups
- masonic control
- masons
- meet-up
- metadata
- metasexdactyly
- michael gorman
- michael porter
- microsoft
- microsoft songsmith
- mike wesch
- milestone
- mobile
- mobile catalog
- mobile web
- monopoly
- moose
- movers and shakers
- nc
- NCSU
- neil gaiman
- NELA2013
- new feature
- new features
- new product
- newspapers
- nipply
- nook
- North Carolina
- oclc
- oclc numbers
- oh
- opacs
- open data
- open library
- Open Shelves Classification
- open source
- openness
- OSC
- OverDrive
- paid memberships
- palinet
- pay what you want
- physical world
- PLA
- PLA12
- PLA2008
- podcasts
- policy
- politics
- polls
- portland
- Portland Public Library
- power laws
- print culture
- profile pictures
- QR code
- ra
- radiohead
- randolph county public library
- rcpl
- readers advisory
- reading
- recommendations
- reloadevery
- remixability
- reviews
- rhinos
- richland county
- rights
- riverine metaphors
- roy tennant
- rusa mars
- safe for work if you're a cataloger
- San Francisco State University
- santathing
- scanning
- schaufferwaffer
- screencasts
- Seattle Public Library
- second life
- secret santas
- serendipity
- series
- sfsu
- shelf browse
- shelfari
- shirky
- similar books
- sincerity
- sirsidynix
- slco
- small libraries
- Social Cataloging
- social media
- social networking
- songsmith
- sony reader
- SOPAC
- spam
- stack map
- stats
- steve lawson
- strangeness
- subjects
- Syndetics Unbound
- syria
- tag mirror
- tagging
- tagmash
- tags
- talis
- talks
- tax exemption
- the
- thingisbn
- Tim
- tipping points
- tools
- translation
- uclassify
- ugc
- Uncategorized
- usability
- user generated content
- users
- utnapishtim
- VC
- vertical social networks
- very short list
- visualizations
- Voyager
- VuFind
- web
- web 2.0
- webinars
- weddings
- weinberger
- West Virginia
- westlaw
- widgets
- Wikimania 2008
- Wikimania2008
- wirral
- wirral libraries
- work disambiguation
- Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control
- works
- worldcat
- worldcat local
- xisbn
- youtube
- zombies
- zoomii
Meta