LibraryThing is a social cataloging

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

. It is used by authors, individuals, libraries, and publishers. Based in

Portland, Maine Portland is the List of municipalities in Maine, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maine and the county seat, seat of Cumberland County, Maine, Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 at the 2020 census. The Portland metropolit ...

, LibraryThing was developed by Tim Spalding and went live on August 29, 2005, on a

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical ( ...

subscriber business model, because "it was important to have customers, not an 'audience' we sell to advertisers." They focused instead on making a series of products for academic libraries. Motivated by the cataloguing opportunities and financial challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the service went "free to all" on March 8, 2020, while maintaining a promise never to use advertising on registered users. it has 2,600,000 users and more than 155 million books catalogued, drawing data from Amazon and from thousands of libraries that use the Z39.50 cataloguing protocol.

Features

The primary feature of LibraryThing (LT) is the cataloging of books, movies, music and other media by importing data from libraries through Z39.50 connections and from six Amazon.com stores. Library sources supply

Dublin Core 140px, Logo of DCMI, maintenance agency for Dublin Core Terms The Dublin Core vocabulary, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Terms (DCMT), is a general purpose metadata vocabulary for describing resources of any type. It was first developed ...

and MARC records to LT; users can import information from over 2000 libraries, including the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

, Canadian National Catalogue,

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

, and

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. Should a record not be available from any of these sources, it is also possible to input the book information manually via a blank form. Each work may comprise different editions, translations, printings, audio versions, etc. Members are encouraged to add publicly visible reviews, descriptions, Common Knowledge and other information about a work; ratings, collections, and tags help categorization. Discussion in the forums is also encouraged. Items are classified using the Melvil Decimal System, based on the out-of-copyright 1922 edition of the

Dewey Decimal Classification The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) (pronounced ) colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. ...

with modifications for standard spelling of division names (as opposed to the original names, which were spelled in accordance with Dewey's advocated spelling reforms), and modernised terminology.

Social features

LibraryThing's social features have been compared to bookmark manager Del.icio.us and the collaborative music service Last.fm. Similar book cataloging sites include aNobii, BookLikes,

Goodreads Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and readi ...

, Libib,

Shelfari Shelfari was a social cataloging applications, social cataloging website. Shelfari users built virtual bookshelves of the titles they owned or had read, and could rate, review, tag (metadata), tag, and discuss their books. Users could also cre ...

(now merged with Goodreads), and weRead.

TinyCat

In 2016, LibraryThing launched TinyCat, an

OPAC The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with ''library catalog'', is an online database of materials held by a library or Library consortium, group of libraries. Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card c ...

designed for the cataloging and circulation of libraries of up to 20,000 items. TinyCat is marketed towards small independent libraries, such as schools, community centers, religious institutions, and academic departments, as well as individuals.

Ownership

LibraryThing is majority owned by founder Tim Spalding. Online bookseller AbeBooks bought a 40% share in LibraryThing in May 2006 for an undisclosed sum. AbeBooks became a subsidiary of Amazon in 2008. In January 2009,

Cambridge Information Group Cambridge Information Group (CIG) is a privately held, family-owned global investment firm focusing on information services, education and technology. The company is led by CEO Andy Snyder. History CIG was founded in 1971 by Robert Snyder and a ...

acquired a minority stake in LibraryThing, and their subsidiary Bowker became the official distributor to libraries.

Publicity

At the end of June 2006, LibraryThing was subject to the

Slashdot effect The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting or the hug of death occurs when a popular website links to a smaller website, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily bec ...

from a ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' article. The site's developers added servers to compensate for the increased traffic. In December of the same year, the site received yet more attention from

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally billed itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories on science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evaluated by site ...

over its UnSuggester feature, which draws suggestions from books least likely to appear in the same catalog as a given book.

References

External links

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TinyCat
{{amazon 2005 establishments in Maine Amazon (company) American book websites American companies established in 2005 Companies based in Maine Internet properties established in 2005 Library 2.0 Multilingual websites Social cataloging applications