April 2008

From WikiThing

Dear LibraryThing member MEMBERNAME,

Welcome to April's State of the Thing email, and your guide to all things new and noteworthy.

[edit] 25 Million Books

LibraryThing now has more than 25,000,000 books! That's a lot of books.

To commemorate the event, we're having a contest--ten ways to make LibraryThing better. Post lists of no more than ten suggestions on how we can improve the site, and you might win a prize! See this blog post for more: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/03/twenty-five-million-books.php

[edit] April Early Reviewer Books

April's batch of Early Reviewer books is our largest ever. Sign up to get a free book, in exchange for writing a review. This month we have nearly 1,600 books up for grabs.

The deadline to request copies is Tuesday, April 8th at 6pm EDT. Request your copy here: http://www.librarything.com/er/list

[edit] Author Chat

We're debuting a new feature this month, Author Chat. In this batch of Early Reviewer books, Broadway Books is giving out copies of "Tell Me Where it Hurts"--Nick Trout's new book about a day in the life of an animal hospital. Read it, review it, think about it. Then Nick will be on LibraryThing from April 14th through the 30th to answer questions and talk about his work and the book. If you don't win an Early Reviewers copy, don't fret--the book was just released so you can get it at your local bookstore or library. Watch the blog for more details, and get ready to chat!

[edit] LibraryThing Authors Opens Up

We're opening up and relaunching our LibraryThing Authors program--our way to connect authors to their fans. Before, we required authors to have at least 50 books cataloged before joining. But some authors wanted to start right away or were more interested in reaching out--talking to members and listing their events--than cataloging their library. So we're dropping the 50 books requirement.

That's not all. Events (from LibraryThing Local) now appear on author pages, so it's easy to keep track of who's speaking where, and when. More on LT Authors and all the things authors can do here: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/03/librarything-authors-opens-up.php

[edit] Common Knowledge in Your Library

The "Common Knowledge" feature is now accessible in your catalog. You can look at and edit series information, important places, awards and the rest directly in your catalog. See the announcement on the blog for more: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/04/common-knowledge-in-your-library.php

[edit] Series Improvements

We've added several small but fun improvements to our member-driven "series" feature. In addition to adding series directly to your catalog, series information now shows up on author pages as well as the page for each work. We've added a "Series Coverage" page to your Profile Statistics, laying out the series and books within series in your own library. We also added author photos to each series page--mostly fun for multi-authored series, like Star Wars.

[edit] 669 Data Sources

In our continued quest to give our members the best data possible, we've added 417 new cataloging sources from around the world to LibraryThing--raising our grand total to 669 sources. That's a huge leap, and opens up cataloging in languages we didn't (or barely) covered before, like Russian, Arabic, Lithuanian and Thai. See the blog post for a list of the highlights: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/04/669-data-sources.php

[edit] And more...

Bored with LibraryThing's color scheme? Think you could do better? Check out the LibraryThing Zen Garden, where you can redesign the site and test out new stylesheets: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/03/change-us-its-librarything-zen-garden.php

The Profile Stats page is revamped, with new sub-pages for things like "Overlap with Legacy Libraries" and "Talk and Group Statistics": http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/03/new-member-stats.php

LibraryThing Local has taken off. With more than 25,500 venues and 2,500 events listed, it's dead simple to see what's happening at your local library or bookstore, or where your favorite author is reading next.

Questions, comments, ideas, suggestions? Send them our way.

- Abby, LibraryThing's librarian (abby@librarything.com) http://www.librarything.com

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