What does a scholar do the day after they complete their MLIS coursework? Why, sign up for Library Thing, of course. It wasn’t, afterall, purchased by WalMart but it inspired this kiddo to start forming even stronger opinions about library OPAC functionality. Why, for instance, do we differentiate the OPAC from the rest of the library’s website? Really, if I’m on a library website and click ’search’ wouldn’t it make sense that I’m searching the web pages AND the catalog too? I’m smart, I can tell the difference between a book on a shelf and a web page… I’m just saying.

Registration steps:

1. Go to Library Thing.
2. Enter a username and password into the login boxes. (yeah, that’s right, registering is as easy as logging in.)
3. Start searching for books to add.

My favorite thing so far (which may not being saying much since it’s been about five minutes) is the search instructions (see screen shot):

Be sloppy, Do what you want. Amazon will probably catch it.

Be strict, Libraries have rules! Enter phrases separated by commas. The words in each phrase must occur together.

Good
• lord of the rings, tolkien
• mistress, robert heinlein
• 0596006365

Or add the book manually or import books.

Go ahead and use ISBNs, ISSNs or UPC/EAN numbers. US and UK ISBNs differ.

Yeah, that’s right… be sloppy (read: natural language searching) OR be strict (as in precision library searching)… you can do both! Hurrah!

Seriously, though… Until library catalogs make searching this easy, people are going to keep using Amazon. Hell, every librarian I know already does. This is a winning combination of meeting users expectations and community-building. They are not putting up unnecessary roadblocks (in this new information economony, playing hard to get is NOT cool) and they are empowering their users. Building community and serving users is what libraries do - all types of libraries - we do not emtomb books to not be used. We provide them. We need to translate that model into the online realm.

Tags: books, community, Libraries, Services, and Librarians, library thing, library2.0, librarything, OPAC, social software, web2.0

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Libraries, Services, and Librarians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.