A Book Lover’s MySpace

Bibliophiles connect online, thanks to LibraryThing

By Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2006

Web rats (who also happen to be bookworms) are flocking to an online site to play, of all things, librarian. Their destination? LibraryThing, where member users can create a sophisticated catalog of their personal book collection, view the collections of others, learn about worthy titles, and connect with like-minded readers. Without advertising or paid PR, LibraryThing has attracted 79,000 members and counting, becoming one of the Net’s sleeper hits, a testament to both the word-of-mouth power of the blogosphere and the enduring passion for books.

Having just celebrated its first birthday in August, the site now boasts more than five million titles cataloged by its users. That would make LibraryThing the 34th largest library in the U.S., bigger than the collection of the University of Virginia.

It’s still a surprise to founder Tim Spalding. Not a librarian himself, but a freelance Web developer and bibliophile, he launched LibraryThing as a little project to help him and his friends catalog their personal libraries. He had no inkling it would explode like it did, says Spalding.

Here’s how it works. Users, who subscribe by providing only a username and password, add books to their catalog by entering titles, authors, or ISBN numbers. LibraryThing then aggregates book data from Amazon.com, the Library of Congress (LC), and 45 other libraries to generate a personal library-quality catalog. Members can then organize and tag their books, using the LC and Dewey decimal systems or by devising their own subject headings. LibraryThing also generates book recommendations based on the collective intelligence of its user libraries.

While retailers such as Amazon base their recommendations on recently purchased books, “LibraryThing takes into account people’s entire libraries, so the recommendations are much more nuanced,” says Abby Blachly, LibraryThing’s librarian. “Take Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, for example. LibraryThing doesn’t just recommend the other Harry Potter books, as Amazon does, but also includes books by Philip Pullman. As such, it works well as a reader’s advisory tool.”

Formerly a corporate archivist, Blachly joined Spalding in May 2006 as LibraryThing’s only other full-time staffer. This was made possible by the investment of abebooks.com, an online company that connects independent booksellers and customers, which bought a 40 percent stake in the site.

Blachly says the real fun part is the social component of LibraryThing, in which users can connect with others who own similar collections. “This summer, we upped the social side, adding Groups and Forums, which allow users to congregate, search a shared library, and talk amongst themselves,” she says. Users have formed groups, including Young Pastors and Pynchon Pandaemonium. But the largest, Blachly says proudly, is the group Librarians Who Library-Thing, which boasts 740 members.

Although LibraryThing was originally designed for personal libraries, Blachly sees the service being applied in a classroom or library setting. (However, children under age 13 are prohibited from using LibraryThing, according to the site’s stated terms of use.)

A pro version of LibraryThing, which is being considered, would likely be more appropriate for schools, says Blachly. “The social aspects of it will be more toned down than in the current version, and it will include additional features such as a distinction between user and administrator accounts, basic circulation, tracking, etc.,” something akin to a stripped down online public access catalog.