Introducing LibraryThing
LibraryThing is what’s known as a social cataloguing site. Literally, it’s a way for people to organise their book collections online.
I discovered LibraryThing when doing some research on tagging. Here’s a link to a very insightful article on the LibraryThing blog. It explains why tagging works so successfully on their site but does not work successfully for the book retailer Amazon.
It found the following:
- Tagging is a way of labelling/organising online content.
- It works well when people tag their own content, not when they are asked to tag someone else’s.
- You need numbers to make tags relevant, otherwise they can easily become distorted.
- Tagging works well when it is about memory.
- When you tag on LibraryThing you are putting your library of books in order and connecting with people who use the same tags.
- Opinion tags in a low numbers environment like Amazon represents a commercial risk.
Quick stats on LibraryThing:
- Founded by Tim Spalding and went live 29 August 2005
- Team of eight
- 500 000 users registered
- 31 million books registered
- 40 million tags listed
- 500,000 book reviews on the site
Who is Tim Spalding?
Tim Spalding is an academic. He was a graduate student in Greek and Latin at the University of Michigan and went on to work for a publishing firm in Boston and as a freelance web developer and web publisher. He lists his interests as ancient history, Greek and Latin and is married to the author Lisa Carey.
Tim started the library to manage his own book collection and for his academic and bibliophile friends to use. He did not anticipate LibraryThing would grow so exponentially or the concept become so successful.
How LibraryThing works:
LibraryThing allows you to catalogue your own personal library. You add your own books by entering their titles, authors or ISBN numbers. The site then searches from the Library of Congress, five Amazon book sites, and over 250 world libraries to find what you are looking for. You can then tag your books to organise/refer to them how you want, rate them, and write reviews on them.
Business model:
- Anyone can sign up and register up to 200 books for free.
- For a larger library or for a group subscription, a one-off fee applies.
- If you browse the site without signing in, you’ll see Google Advertising.
- LibraryThing get a referral fee when books are sold from book retailers who provide the cover images of the books.
Tools and functionality:
Once you have added a book you can log into that book’s page which shows:
- Its average rating;
- How many people - and who - has added it to their libraries;
- How many reviews it’s had;
- Which users have similar libraries to you. (The idea being you can view their libraries and find other books that you might want to read).
There is also a tag cloud so that you can find other books on subjects that interest you; as well as LibraryThing recommendations and recommendations from other users.
The LibraryThing site provides html code so that you can add a feed from your library to your blog. This shows a selection of book covers from your library. When people click on the book covers this takes them to the Amazon site and LibraryThing gets a percentage fee for all book sales through this channel. When people click on the title they are directed to the LibraryThing site.
LibraryThing also provides information on book events that are happening in your area. This is pretty impressive given the site is truly international now. You can search for book-related events like upcoming writers’ festivals, and talks from authors in local book stores and libraries. This is a way of developing a real as well as virtual social network through books.
Another interesting thing you can do with LibraryThing is make a photo-mosaic of all your favourite book covers on your blog or facebook page. This is also a way of selling books on Amazon and generating revenue for LibraryThing.
You can also get LibraryThing on your mobile phone so when you are standing in the book shop trying to remember whether you already have the book say in a particular series (for me Armistead Maupin ‘Tales of the City’ series) you can check your library before making the purchase.
Another thing you can do is add an “I am currently reading” tag to your emails or to your blog. This code simply picks up the last book you added to your library, so updates automatically when you add your latest book.
Design:
The design is very boring. It looks like a cataloguing site rather than a social networking site.
The brown banner and Times New Roman font is not very appealing – to anyone! Granted the site is appealing to a broad demographic (not for instance Gen Y), but it could be a lot cleaner and more contemporary looking.
The pages are very busy and text heavy, with users often having to scroll down and across to find content. Because there is so much going on in the site, it would be better if users could customise their pages so that they could see what they want to see.
The book covers enhance the site a lot. They add colour and help bring the site to life. The profile images of the different users also have this effect and help users connect with this online community.
Despite the design limitations, I really like this site as I think the concept is brilliant and appealing to book lovers of all ages. Check it out here!
