Presentation given to the Cataloguing and Indexing Group of the Library Association of Ireland at their 2009 Annual Seminar about leveraging Library Thing in library opac's.

1. Leveraging LibraryThing:
Adding uncontrolled vocabulary to your
catalogue
Niamh Walker-Headon
Systems Librarian – ITT Dublin

2. Why Library Thing
• New web site
– Introducing Web 2.0
• Adding interactivity
• Options explored
– Star Ratings on web site already
– Add on supplied by LMS supplier
– Aquabrowser (see TCD’s catalogue)
– Library Thing

3. The debate
• Review of the options
– Star Ratings on web site already
• Not really intuitive
– Add on supplied by LMS supplier
• Not yet ready and anticipated cost is not yet known
– (Wanted a solution in 2007)

4. More debate…
– Aquabrowser
• Monthly subscription, costing.

5. Outcome of the debate
– Library Thing
• Looked like an interesting interim option
– Annual subscription > Very reasonable
– Already widely used online
» Personal libraries, reading communities, etc.
• Examples later

6. Uncontrolled vocabulary
• Debate about uncontrolled vocabulary
– Ongoing
• Current controlled vocabulary not changing as fast
as needed
– Did not want to make any changes to our
MARC records
• Like the idea of FRBR, but it’s still not
finalised
– Library thing links to similar titles

7. FRBR??!!***
• FRBR: Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Records
– Idea is to change how catalogues present
records so that records associated with one
piece of intellectual property appear together
• MORE ABOUT FRBR: http://www.frbr.org/

8. Library thing??@@!!
• Library thing started out as a web based
interactive web 2.0 application for
personal use
– There has been a librarian involved since the
early days
• It has since branched out into the library
arena

9. What is library thing - personal
• “LibraryThing helps you create a library-
quality catalog of your books..
• And because everyone catalogs online,
they also catalog together.
• LibraryThing connects people based on
the books they share.”
• From http://www.librarything.com/tour/
• It is very interactive, and builds
communities fast

10. Library thing - personal
Tags are added
here by personal
users

11. What Library thing does

12. Tags????
• Tags are:
• “Tags, a type of metadata involving the
association of descriptors with objects. “
– From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags
• Also used on blogs, social networking sites and
wikis.

13. Tag clouds?!!***
• “A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design)
is a visual depiction of content tags used on a
website. Often, more frequently used tags are
depicted in a larger font or otherwise
emphasized, while the displayed order is
generally alphabetical.[1] Thus both finding a tag
by alphabet and by popularity is possible.
Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will
generally lead to a collection of items that are
associated with that tag”
– From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud

14. More about Library Thing- personal
• “LibraryThing knows how books connect,
providing some of the best recommendations on
the web.
• LibraryThing can analyze your entire catalog and
come up with 100 or so books you might want to
check out.
• The UnSuggester will give you humorous
recommendations of books you probably
wouldn't enjoy.”
• From: http://www.librarything.com/tour/6

15. What does LibraryThing for Libraries do?
• “Give your patrons exciting new content,
including recommendations and tag clouds.
• Let your patrons take part, with reviews, ratings
and tags. Keep the control you want.
• Enhance your catalog with just a few lines of
HTML. Works with any OPAC and requires no
back-end integration. Really.
• Draw on the collective intelligence of your
patrons and LibraryThing members. “
• From http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/

16. What does it give users
• When a catalogue record matches an item in
the library thing database
– “Book recommendations. Show high-quality
"recommended" or "similar" books.
– Tag browsing. Give your patrons the power and
flexibility of searching and browsing your books by
tags.
– Other editions and translations. Link related
editions and translations of the same work. "FRBR"-
ize your catalog with a few lines of HTML. “
• From http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/
In your catalogue, by title.
Using tag clouds

17. Coming soon...
• User reviews. Access hundreds of
thousands of reviews and let your
patrons add their own.
• User tagging. Let your patrons tag. Tags
can be shared across all participating
libraries.
• User ratings. Add our ratings and give
patrons the ability to rate books.
• From http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/tour/2

18. How good is it?
• LibraryThing for Libraries draws on
LibraryThing.com,.
• Library thing say they can enhance 50%
or more of your ISBNs.
– ITT Dublin submitted 20,000 isbn’s. Library
thing had matched for over 15,000 of them.

19. What about the Tags
• LibraryThing members have added more
than 23 million tags to books
• Library thing have killed all the "bad" tags
– Laundered you might say…

20. Getting Set up - Timeline
• March / April 2007
– Discussion and decision to investigate further
• May / June 2007
– Debate and investigation
– Institute Librarian attends Tim Spalding's’ address to IIUG
• July 2007
– Costing sought
• August 2007
– Order created
– Library thing on test server
• October 2007
– Library thing went live – with new library web site.

21. How does it work? Exporting
• Step one:
– Export ISBN, title and author information in
tab-delimited format and send to Library
thing.
• This is a tab delimited file based on your marc
records.

22. How does it work ? Coding
• Step two: Paste the HTML
– Add a few lines of HTML to your catalogue’s
template
• You may need someone else to do this for you
• For us this was the bib_display.html file
– <div id="ltfl_tagbrowse" class="ltfl"></div>
– <div id="ltfl_related" class="ltfl">
– <div id="ltfl_similars" class="ltfl"></div>

23. How does it work? Other Web pages
• And we added the ‘widget’ provided by library thing to the
botlogo.html file.
• This file appears at the bottom of every page.
– <script src="http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/widget.js?
id=73-1846465501"
type="text/javascript"></script><noscript>This page contains
enriched content visible when JavaScript is enabled or by
clicking here for<a
href="http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/noscript.php?
id=73-1846465501&accessibility=1"> Library thing data
</a>.</noscript>
» Each LibraryThing for Libraries "widget" is fully
customizable.
» Control how it works and how it looks
» We used css to make it match our catalogue

24. How does it work? Testing
• Step three: Test and go!
• Testing
– Without your users noticing any changes
– We did this on our testing server for the new web site
– Play around with where you want the information to
appear by changing the location of the html code in
your template
• Turn it on.
– Turn it off anytime too
• This was important for us

25. Additional points of access
• Tags
– Copy status tab
– Click on a tag (word) ad you are brought to a
list of titles with the same tag
• Subject headings are ignored in the main by our
users
– See if Tags are more noticed
» So far they seem to be

26. FRBR type access points
• Related items
– More details tab
– Translations and other EDITIONS linked
directly within the catalogue
• Similar items
– Similar item tab
– Other related titles linked directly within the
catalogue

27. Examples from ITT Dublin
• Search examples:
– Word > Lord of the rings
– Title > Blue ocean strategy
– Author > Feist, Raymond E.
» Olivier, Jamie
– Subject > Ansel Adams

28. Questions?
• Find out more:
– http://www.librarything.com
– http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries
• See LibraryThing for Libraries at
– http://library.ittdublin.ie
– http://cat.danburylibrary.org/record=1168934
– http://witcat.wit.ie/search~/a?
searchtype=X&searcharg=fellowship+of+the+
ring&SORT=D

29. Tag cloud- Fellowship of the ring

30. Recommendations from Catalogue

31. Linked to another title

32. Other edition in catalogue

33. Record for other edition

34. Similar items – Trilogy titles

35. Straight to Return of the King

36. Full record – controlled headings