LibraryThing

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Image:Logo4 medium.gifLibraryThing is a web application for storing and sharing personal library catalogs and book lists, a prominent social cataloging application. It was developed by Tim Spalding and went live on August 29, 2005. By its one-year anniversary in August 2006, LibraryThing had attracted more than 73,000 registered users who had catalogued 5.1 million individual books, representing nearly 1.2 million unique works. The LibraryThing website doesn't use advertising, but receives referral fees from online bookstores that supply book cover images. Individual users can sign up for free and register up to 200 books. Beyond that limit and/or for commercial or group use, a subscription fee is charged. Online bookseller Abebooks bought a 40% share in LibraryThing in June 2006 for an undisclosed sum.<ref>Jan Gardner, "Net gain for readers", Boston Globe, July 9, 2006.</ref>

Users (informally known as thingamabrarians, a term coined by contributor RJO) can catalog personal collections, keep reading lists and wish lists, and meet other users who have the same books. While it is possible to keep a library catalog private, most people choose to make their catalogs public, which makes it possible to find others with similar tastes. Thingamabrarians can browse the entire database by searching titles, authors, or tags generated by users as they enter books into their libraries. A "similar libraries" feature lets users find other people who share many books with them. A "recommendations" feature was introduced in April 2006, which provides book recommendations in several categories based on the holdings of users with similar books. A "groups" discussion feature was added in July 2006.

The early success of LibraryThing may be attributable to its social nature, but it also has something to do with the ease of adding books and its attention to detail. Built into LibraryThing is an 'add books' feature which will take a title, author, or ISBN and search the holdings at the Library of Congress or more than forty-five other public and research libraries, as well as commercial booksellers (including Amazon.com) around the world. Searches of Amazon.com use the Amazon E-Commerce Service, while library searches use the Z39.50 protocol. These libraries include the Library of Congress, Canadian National Catalogue, Yale University, and many other large university libraries. Once the right book and edition has been located, a simple click adds it to the user's catalog, at which time personal tags may be added to suit one's own organizational needs. The availability of MARC data through major libraries makes it possible for an individual to attain a high level of accuracy in record keeping.

LibraryThing has been compared with social software such as the bookmark manager Del.icio.us<ref>Jim Regan, "Do your own LibraryThing", Christian Science Monitor, November 9, 2005.</ref> and the collaborative music service Last.fm.

At the end of June 2006, LibraryThing was subject to the Slashdot effect from a Wall Street Journal article.<ref>Aaron Rutkoff, Social Networking for Bookworms, Wall Street Journal, June 27, 2006.</ref> The site's developers added servers to compensate for the increased traffic.

LibraryThing maintains two blogs and a forum for discussions about LibraryThing. Since the introduction of the forum section of the site, called "Talk," the previously very active LibraryThing Google Group has seen significantly less traffic.