long. Work in flip-flops and a towel for
all we care.
Send a resume and an example of something you've made, then let's talk.
Contact:
Tim Spalding
LibraryThing
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
AIM: eucratides
207 899-1910
I'm sure many of you are already familiar with OCLC's xISBN service.
Today I released thingISBN, LibraryThing's answer to xISBN. Where
xISBN uses OCLC's FRBRized data, thingISBN uses LibraryThing's
everyone a librarian wiki-like cataloging. The results are pretty
interesting, I think. xISBN has
Does anyone have a complete collection of LC MARC bibliographic,
authority or classification CDs from the Catalog Distribution Service?
Want to lend them LibraryThing?
LibraryThing will put them to good use in an open, free, easy-to-use
XML-based bibliographic data service.
I gather that,
Our severs are all Greek gods—Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Athena. Zeus is the
master, of course. I didn't decide on Athena's name, or I would have
made it Artemis.
For a storage server I inflicted LibraryThing's employees with the
greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, a pronunciation disaster. (You'd
I'm having trouble getting to it too.
I'd be interested to know how LibraryThing can help. As you know,
we've got something FRBR-esque—user-driven not algorithmic.
Tim
On 11/1/06, Alexander Johannesen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi,
You may be interested in OpenFRBR:
Right, but CDDB is mostly about retrieval, not editing. OpenFRBR needs
to embed its *editing* functions within something else, don't you
think? Certainly, once it has data, it should offer itself via APIs
like xISBN and thingISBN.
PS: Desktop home cataloging software Bah! ;)
On 11/2/06,
Is it really impossible to go to Code4Lib now because it's full-up? We
were mulling it, but it looks impossible now. Any advice?
Tim Spalding
LibraryThing
How do you see an OSLC developing?
I've always felt the basis was getting some open library data—getting
the LC data out. This is apparently what the other Casey is doing.
Is there another way? Are there other supports that could be in place
when the LC data gets out?
T
On 5/10/07, Casey
Pardon if you got this through NextGenCatalogs, but LibraryThing has
its first library using LibraryThing for Libraries.
Blog post:
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2007/05/danbury-ct-kicks-off-librarything-for.php
For this list, I propose that LTFL shows a two interesting things.
They're
I just saw Roy's presentation, and it was good. Faced with a restive
but not radicalized audience of SD customers, Roy moved the issue
another couple yards toward what most members of Code4Lib believe and
want, but without any harshness or rancor.
But those of us who are angrier than Roy need to
I think the point about prisons is that they cannot provide any web access
to inmates. This is why members of this list need to be very careful to stay
on the right side of the law.
Tim
On 1/31/08, Casey Bisson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Libraryworld.net is a hosted solution for $1/day.
Sent
This is relative the prison-libraries question, but also expanding it:
Has anyone looked at Google Gears?
Google Gears Beta is an open source browser extension that enables
web applications to provide offline functionality...
I wonder if you could take a stripped-down OPAC (or LT) and make it
Be careful to stay on the right side of the language about magnetic tape.
Tim
On 2/6/08, Reese, Terry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Isn't sharing such records a no-no?
No, OCLC's guidelines for transfer
(http://www.oclc.org/support/documentation/worldcat/records/guidelines/default.htm)
Here's a quick note that I've added LCCN and OCLC number support to ThingISBN.
Post:
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/02/thingisbn-adds-lccns-oclc-numbers.php
I'm also trying to make a list of projects using ThingISBN. If your
project is one of them, drop something at:
I think OL is torn between a number of ideas, one being a web page
for every book, some with scans and another being a free, open
fielded wiki for cataloging data.
I find the former pretty uninteresting. We don't need Wikipedia again.
And when it comes to scans, Google's different—and I think
I'd like to say we should not get sidetracked by discussions of
business models. I particularly object to the idea that LibraryThing
can't experiment in the way that OL can because we have to have a
business model.
I won't toot my own horn, but I think LibraryThing has experimented a
good
(Apologies for cross-posting)
I just posted a simple way to get free book covers into your OPAC. It
uses the new Google Book Search API.
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/03/free-covers-for-your-library-from.php
I think Google has as much cover coverage as anyone. The API is free.
just one; Scopus is another content-provider that frustratingly provides
an Javascript-only API) in a variety of ever-changing user-facing
interfaces. DRY and all.
Jonathan
Tim Spalding wrote:
limits. I don't think it's a strict hits-per-day, I think it's heuristic
software meant
I've seen some OPACs with a you are about to be logged out popup.
The LC does this.
I'd think it would be easy to write a JS that simply refreshes the
page, reinvigorating the session.
All of this is idiotic and childish, of course. The only non-library
website I visit now that times out at all
We've had this fight on Code4Lib before, but it deserves mentioning
that no browser breaks this, and no browser developer is going to
break it. It's widely used—for more widely used than any number of
standards-compliant techniques that don't work and probably never
will. To care about this in the
You can get a compete list of the ISBNs on LibraryThing—about six
months ago, but hey—from this page:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/LibraryThing_APIs
Then you can grab random ones.
T
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Godmar Back [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi,
thanks to everybody
0.2% full text? Yowch!
Do academic libraries with full-text versions of the book on their
shelves really want to point people to no-preview pages on Google.
That's like a dating site with no photos of the members, and the
profiles omit everything but their favorite potato variety.
Doing LCCNs
Two thought experiments:
*Let's add SparkNotes to the catalog. After all, SparkNotes has
information about books. Therefore, since all information is good
information, let's add it to the catalog.
*If SparkNotes, let's add free-essay-mill essays into the catalog.
*If that works, let's add
So, I took a long slow look at ten of the examples from Godmar's file.
Nothing I saw disabused me of my opinion: No preview pages on Google
Book Search are very weak tea.
Are they worthless? Not always. But they usually are. And,
unfortunately, you generally need to read the various references
Most of our users will start out in an electronic environment whether we like
it or not
(most of us on THIS list like it)---and will decide, based on what they
find there, on their own, without us making the decision for
them---whether to obtain (or attempt to obtain) a copy of the physical
I agree that showing the user evaluative resources that are not any good
is not a service to the user. When there are no good evaluative
resources available, we should not show bad ones to the user.
I think we actually agree on what should happen. We disagree on the
theory behind that :)
Security measures can be set in place to prevent
the scenario you describe.
Is the state of Minnesota or the city of Minneapolis able to copyright
its work? Certainly this is impossible on the Federal level. But state
laws vary. What would a FOIA request produce?
Tagging systems (or pop
I think LibraryThing should have an iPhone ap. --- Tim establishes an
iron-clad IRS justification for writing off an iPhone!
T
On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Houghton,Andrew [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Stephens, Owen
Sent:
I'd consider teaching them how to use SQL directly.
I've done it at LibraryThing. I take employees from the simplest
SELECTs all the way to a people-who-have-X-also-have-Y self-join in
one long hands-on lesson. It doubles as a sort of test, and I've even
used it in hiring. LibraryThing's two
This gets religious quickly, but, in my experience, programmers who
learn on a framework miss out on their understanding of database
necessities. They may not matter much when you have a low-traffic,
low-content situation, but as your traffic and data grow you're going
to want an understanding of
to call up photos to appear on the page
via AJAX. I see it becoming quite popular among 3-5 people.
Alex
Tim Spalding wrote:
I'd consider teaching them how to use SQL directly.
I've done it at LibraryThing. I take employees from the simplest
SELECTs all the way to a people-who-have-X-also-have
[ Apologies for cross-posting ]
LibraryThing just released a free, CC-attribution-licensed Web
Services XML API to our Common Knowledge system, including series
data, fictional characters, author dates and much else. I'm
particularly stoked about the series data. I think it's of exceptional
Does Google Mini facet? It seems to have a concept of collections, but
does it facet by them?
T
On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 12:05 AM, Bill Dueber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
At UMich, we use space on a Google Appliance as our site search
(different setups for internal vs. public pages) and have been
After releasing all our series, award prizes and such, we've now
released all our covers. See the blog:
http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/08/million-free-covers-from-librarything.php
I really hope this—or more probably what comes of this—ends the
selling of covers to libraries. Data
First, IANAL, obviously.
Clearly, publishers own the intellectual property of a cover graphic. Could
using thumbnail images of lots of covers in aggregate be considered fair
use? Maybe, the law is not clear (there is some case law to suggest it
could be, but it's hardly settled).
Publishers
It bears repeating that many library standards, notably MARC, are
essentially non-relational and non-normalized. Fully normalized
relational databases aren't an obvious idea if you're never been
exposed to them—and something like a religious revelation once you
have. Whether or not SQL is a useful
That's definitely true. One cartesian query can ruin your day...
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 1:22 PM, John Fereira [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Tim Spalding wrote:
I'd consider teaching them how to use SQL directly.
I've done it at LibraryThing. I take employees from the simplest
SELECTs all
Casey: I think it's extremely hard to appreciate both the advantages
and disadvantages of a framework if you haven't done a bunch of stuff
both with and without one. ... Tim can be at least as productive
writing PHP by hand as I can using Django, but most of us can't be
Tim. Most of us need to
I'm guessing that GMU-paid people wrote the code in question—they have
quite a team now. But it would an interesting legal question if
outside people had done it as part of the Open Source process and GMU
had merely agreed to include the code.
Tim
On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Peter Murray
In general, do members think it's best—most popular but also most
productive— to meet at a *hub* or somewhere off the beaten path?
If the former, it's Boston all the way, right? If the latter,
Portland, Maine is a really nice place to meet, and I can put a bunch
of you up at the LibraryThing
The Forbes Library in Northampton is the only library in the country
still using Cutter's original system. We could have a field trip
Tim
On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:25 PM, Keith Jenkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 2:00 PM, Jay Luker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The reasons I
@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 14:00:46 -0400
To: Code for Libraries CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] New England code4lib gathering
On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 12:47 PM, Tim Spalding [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In general, do members think it's best‹most popular
LibraryThing has two open positions—hacker and designer. If you find
someone for us, you get $1,000 in free books! If you find yourself,
you get the money—and a job.
The trick is: the jobs are in the Portland, Maine area. That's non-negotiable.
Hacker: We're looking for two of the three—PHP,
Without piling on Roy—things that seem easy aren't always so when you
consider the whole context (redundancy, maintenance, security,
etc.)—how do OCLC members usually get their technical requests met?
OCLC is, at root, a member organization. How does that play out when
it comes to members'
Free lobster if you change your vote!
Tim
A second step might be to recognize that some of the most compelling
uses of library-related metadata is taking—and if libraries take their
role as information *providers* seriously, SHOULD be taking—place
outside of the libraries and even the library world.
So, perhaps we can change it to
Has anyone seen uClassify? I'm skeptical, but also excited to play
with it. I created a $100 prize for the coolest
uClassify/bibliographic metadata implementation?
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/12/uclassify-library-mashup-with-prize.php
Has anyone played with it already? Has anyone
Don't you think that's rather dangerous? PHP serialization can include
objects, and it calls wakeup() on the object if that exists after
unserialization. In theory that could do almost anything, right?
Tim
On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Cloutman, David
dclout...@co.marin.ca.us wrote:
I have a
Or put the events in LibraryThing local, and then get a feed from it
for your library...
Tim
On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote:
If you want to publish calendar event information, you should use
iCal/iCalendar instead of making up your own format.
On LibraryThing:
1. Our performance should be okay, but we don't make guarantees.
2. That shouldn't matter so much, however, as the daily maximums and
our request should move you to fetch images and cache them on your
end.
Tim
Roy,
I know there was some grumbling last time that temporary keys switched
off almost the minute the conference was over. It might be more
attractive if WorldCat committed to allowing mashups built during
mashup events—which aren't in conflict with some rule or otherwise
unattractive to OCLC,
They're also tightened up the API in various ways, and renamed it the
Amazon.com Product Advertising API. Although I know of no case when
Amazon has shut down a library, it would be hard for any to claim
their site had as their principal purpose advertising and marketing
the Amazon Site and
BTW, we are sponsoring a mini-symposium on the topic of mass digitization
here at Notre Dame, tomorrow:
Any protesters expected? ;)
T
LibraryThing.com, the innovative, Portland, Maine-based social
networking site for book lovers wants an intern.
We can think of four possible types for whom we could create a nifty
internship. We're only looking to get one intern, though.
* Weird Library Science (MLS students)
* Web 2.0
I suspect that proxying Google will trigger an automatic throttle.
Early on, a number of us hit GB hard, trying to figure out what they
had, and got stopped.
Tim
On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Eric Hellmane...@hellman.net wrote:
Recent attention to privacy concerns about Google Book Search
...Today is the last day to nominate/defend/decry nominees for
Code4Lib2010 in Asheville...
Is it pointless to nominate Tim O'Reilly?
Tim
I wonder if Code4Lib would ever be a good outlet for online
programming tutorials or hack sessions. I mean, get 10 people on
Etherpad or CodeArmy together, and Skype, and you could learn a lot,
and do a lot.
Tim
Sorry.
https://squadedit.com/
Brain error.
Tim
On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 9:52 AM, David Kane dk...@wit.ie wrote:
What is CodeArmy? can't find a reference to it anywhere.
David.
2010/1/8 graham gra...@theseamans.net
MJ Ray wrote:
Tim Spalding t...@librarything.com wrote:
I wonder
Code4Libers may be interested in something I just released on
LibraryThing. It's called CoverGuess, and it's a sort of like Google
Labeler for book covers. It turns tagging covers into a competitive
game.
As with much of what we do, the data will be released as Creative
Commons Attribution
It's on the list, but someone needs to mention danMARC, the
Danish-language MARC standard, and the best library-standards pun yet!
On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 2:57 PM, Kyle Banerjee kyle.baner...@gmail.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards lists a number of them
PHP. I have to agree with others - don't bother with PHP.
Largest website in Perl: Del.icio.us
Largest website in PHP: Facebook
Tim
Finally, I never would have put the strings PHP and sexiness in a
sentence together (though I guess I just did).
A simple Google search shows how very wrong you are:
sexy php - 56,100,000 results
sexy asp - 8,380,000
sexy java - 6,360,000
sexy ruby - 2,840,000
sexy perl - 532,000
sexy C++ -
Ruby may be sexy but sexy ruby on rails gets only four hits. As
for sexy python, well, no comment.
T
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Andrew Hankinson
andrew.hankin...@gmail.com wrote:
Just out of curiosity I tried them in quotes:
sexy ruby - 72,200
sexy python - 37,900
sexy php - 25,100
Does anyone know:
Is there a what is a WorldCat record section? I can't find it. Does
the original cataloger concept still apply, or has that gone away?
Tim
I just hope, if they do, they come up with something relevant--like a
Nigerian oil executive who needs a little money to start a library. :)
Tim
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote:
I live in fear of the day that spammers discover they can get on
. But if a community has a vague norm about respect for
persons, and enforces them with punitive action, the community
members may find themselves punished for kicking sand at someone, or
giving them the finger.
Tim
On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 2:45 AM, Tim Spalding t...@librarything.com wrote:
Does anyone know
I was wondering if there was a good microformat. The trick is that the
citation format is very much about stuff that gets displayed, and
lacks the critical linking ids you'd want—ISBN, SSN, LCCN, OCLC, ASIN,
EAN, etc.
If people know of others that would work, maybe that's the answer.
On Wed, Apr
too well with certain
kinds of citations like movies or music either, it's really focused on
published textual materials.
Jonathan
Tim Spalding wrote:
I was wondering if there was a good microformat. The trick is that the
citation format is very much about stuff that gets displayed
Can we just hold a vote or something?
I'm happy to do whatever the community here wants and will actually
use. I want to do something that will be usable by others. I also
favor something dead simple, so it will be implemented. If we don't
reach some sort of conclusion, this is an interesting
So this is my recommended framework for proceeding. Tim, I'm afraid you'll
actually have to do the hard work yourself.
No, I don't. Because the work isn't fundamentally that hard. A complex
standard might be, but I never for a moment considered anything like
that. We have *512 bytes*, and it
I thought I'd pass along a link to a conversation on LibraryThing.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/90309
The topic is how LibraryThing can start exposing more MARC data—in
this case the 300 physical-description field—so that the library data
structure works with the simpler structure of Amazon
Jenn,
It's really beautiful. Like a good map or timetable, you can pore over
it for hours. I want a big copy for the office.
Can you explain it to me a little? For example, what does it mean to
say that XML or MPEG-21 has a much stronger connection to the library
community—as defined by uptake,
MARC records break parsing far too frequently. Apart from requiring no
truly specialized tools, MARCXML should—should!—eliminate many of
those problems. That's not to mention that MARC character sets vary a
lot (DanMARC anyone?), and more even in practice than in theory.
From my perspective the
- XML is self-describing, binary is not.
Not to quibble, but that's only in a theoretical sense here. Something
like Amazon XML is truly self-describing. MARCXML is self-obfuscating.
At least MARC records kinda imitate catalog cards.
:)
Tim
On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Andrew Hankinson
Does processing speed of something matter anymore? You'd have to be
doing a LOT of processing to care, wouldn't you?
Tim
On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 3:35 PM, MJ Suhonos m...@suhonos.ca wrote:
I'll just leave this here:
http://www.indexdata.com/blog/2010/05/turbomarc-faster-xml-marc-records
That
Thanks for the note. I was too exhausted to take you up on it—up all
night fixing bugs :(
Tim
On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Ed Summers e...@pobox.com wrote:
Whoops, that was bus 61B not 61D.
//Ed
15:23 edsu @quote get 3
15:23 zoia edsu: Quote #3: edsu, your source for bad advice
I recommend immersing yourself in Steve Souder's two books—High
Performance Websites, and Even Faster Websites. As it stresses again
and again, the killer isn't the length of your content, but the number
of files (only so many can be loaded in parallel), latency, expiry
checks and so forth.
For kicks, random OCLC results should return Reznor's Happiness in
Slavery instead.
:)
T
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Ethan Gruber ewg4x...@gmail.com wrote:
Because Trent Reznor is the center of all things.
On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Brice Stacey brice.sta...@umb.edu wrote:
When I
We'd be interested to hear too. But why does it need to save locally,
rather than having a wireless connection to a computer? They're not
going to wander around the museum with them are they?
Tim
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Adam Wead aw...@rockhall.org wrote:
Hi all,
Can anyone recommend
We did some tests on it, but found it a very poor fit for a site
dependent on huge amount of data which much be present to the
basically the whole system all the time and up-to-date. In other
words, we found it didn't match a site based on MySQL slaves
replicating here and there, and with
Another vote for lightning talks being claimed on the spot.
How about a compromise. If you claim one early, it'll be publicized and you
can't lose your spot if there are too many?
Does anyone keep up on the Juice Project? ( http://juice-project.org ).
It's sort of an open-source framework for adding extensions to library
OPACs, similar to what the framework behind LibraryThing for Libraries or
Syndetics' ICE does, but open source. The UK ILS vendor Talis pushed it.
I
your library's events to LibraryThing,
LibraryThing is giving money to charity for every event added, manually
through a new event-adding API.
See the blog post:
http://www.librarything.com/blogs/librarything/2012/11/add-events-to-librarything-local-and-give-books-to-needy-readers/
Best,
Tim
the decision
right.
Sincerely,
Tim Spalding
LibraryThing
LibraryThing is expanding, and looking for an all-around great PHP
programmer to work on LibraryThing.com. The focus is on PHP, MySQL,
HTML and CSS, but library-specific technologies and formats are also
valuable.
You can work where you are, or come into the office in Portland, Maine.
Rather
For fun I'm throwing a day-long, almost-free introduction to PHP session
alongside the pre-conference day at ALA Annual.
It's called Enough PHP To Be Dangerous, and will be held Friday, June 27,
2014 a few blocks from the Convention Center.
Blog post is here:
Dear Code4Lib-ers,
LibraryThing, the company behind LibraryThing.com and LibraryThing for
Libraries ( https://www.librarything.com/forlibraries ), is looking to hire
a crackerjack library developer/programmer.
We like to think we make products that don't suck, as opposed to much of
what's
Apologies for the semi-repost, but Code4Lib-ers may be interested that
we've added a $1,000 bounty—a ton of books from the bookstore of your
choice—to anyone who helps LibraryThing find a library programmer. Tell a
friend or self-refer.
Blog post:
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