LibraryThing is an online service that allows individuals to catalog, tag, and classify their books, and share them with others. Currently there are over 200,000 online members using the service, tagging 16 million books. The company has come up with an application for libraries, called LibraryThing for Libraries, that allows these and other features to be applied to library catalogues. Libraries receive from LibraryThing information about tags and similar books for all of the books in the library’s catalogue. This information is then incorporated to produce a value-added catalogue.

Danbury Public Library (DPL) was the first to try out LibraryThing for Libraries. The majority of the monographs in their catalogue have records that display LibraryThing information. For instance, in addition to subject headings, the catalogue user is presented with a tag cloud taken from the user-supplied LibraryThing tags. Similar to the use of hyperlinked subject headings in a catalogue, clicking on any of these tags brings the searcher to a list of books labeled with that tag. In addition, beside the list of books with that tag, the user is also presented with other tags that are often associated with their chosen tag.

(image source: http://flickr.com/photos/pollyalida/1715830436/)

As mentioned in the LibraryThing’s Thing-ology Blog, tags give the user the option for searching with simpler terms, as well as allowing for more exact searching. They give the example of searching for the tags “Usability” or “Information Architecture” – both of which would have been lumped into “Web sites—Design” as a subject heading. Melissa L. Rethlefson of Library Journal explains that searching in a catalogue using tags also allows a patron to find materials with certain characteristics – such as a written by a female author, or including dark humour – that are not normally searchable in traditional catalogues.

DPL’s catalogue records also include book recommendations based on similarity to the book that was searched for. For instance, a search for Tolstoy’s War and Peace produced the catalogue record that included other recommended books by Tolstoy and other Russian authors from a similar time period.

Other features of DPL’s LibraryThing for Libraries catalogue are the referral of the user to other editions, translations, and formats of the requested work, and the inclusion of an enlargeable picture of the book jacket next to the title in the record.

(image source: http://flickr.com/photos/pollyalida/1714980205/)

There are definitely some improvements to be made, however, to DPL’s catalog and LibraryThing for Libraries in general. There is no indication of exactly which materials include the LibraryThing information (it seems to be the majority of the library’s books but no other media), or which books include information about other editions and formats (it seems to be very few). The “extras” – the tags and the recommended books – are much slower to load than the rest of the catalogue record. These are recognized by LibraryThing for Libraries, and are currently being worked out.

Also being developed by LibraryThing is the option for more involvement of users at the library level. Currently it is the input of LibraryThing users that supplies the tags for individual books. However, under development is the ability for users of catalogues supplemented by LibraryThing for Libraries to also supply tagging information, as well as reviews and ratings. While DPL’s current catalogue and use of LibraryThing for Libraries is an impressive and user-friendly tool, I think the increased ability for users to interact and contribute to the catalogue would be a boon to the library.