LibraryThing and Our Catalog Part 2

What are tags?
Tags are a way to categorize things. In the case of LibraryThing, it's a way to categorize books. The tags you see in the library catalog are created by LibraryThing users. Unlike subject headings, any LibraryThing user can add their own tags to a book.

Tags are particularly useful for genre fiction where subject headings don’t always match common usage. For example, the term “cozy mystery” isn’t an official subject heading. Yet, users often add the tag “cozy mystery” to books such as Aunt Dimity's Death and Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth. Here is an example of the tags for Murder with Peacocks.

Within a tag cloud, the larger the tag, the more people have used it. In this case, more people consider Murder with Peacocks a mystery rather than a romance. See Wikipedia for more information about tag clouds.

Using Tags to Search
Clicking on a tag within the catalog will pop up a window that displays all the other books in our collection with the same tag. For instance, clicking on amateur detective on the Murder with Peacocks tag cloud retrieves books such as Dying for Chocolate and The Mummy Case. Clicking on any of the resulting titles will redirect you to more information about that book.

It is also possible to search for multiple tags at a time. For instance, let’s say I wanted a list of books with the tags young adult and space opera. Here’s how I would search:

1. Go to http://catalog.mylibrary.us/ and search for any popular book (Kite Runner is a good choice)
2. Click on a title to bring up the detailed information page
3. Click on any of the tags that appear on the left. If a tag cloud does not appear, search for another book
4. Within the tag browser search box, enter the tags you wish to search for separated by a comma. In this case, I enter young adult, space opera
5. Click the Search button to retrieve your results

To exclude a specific tag from your search, preface it with a double dash. For instance, if I wanted young adult space opera but did not want any books dealing with the military, my search would have looked like this: young adult, space opera, --military. To just "demote" military titles from the results, use a single dash.

Reviews
Another feature LibraryThing provides is the ability to view and write reviews of books. If reviews exist, you can read them by going to the detailed information page for a book and clicking on see reviews/add a review. A window will pop up that displays the reviews. These reviews come from both LibraryThing users and High Plains Library District’s borrowers.

To write a review:

1. Go to the detailed information page for the book you wish to review. I'm going to look up Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.
3. Within the detailed view of the book, click on see reviews/add a review.
4. Click Review this Yourself.
• If you have not reviewed items before, click next to Start a new reviews account and enter your username, password, email address, and click Submit.
• Otherwise, enter your existing username and password.
5. If desired, choose a star rating, enter your review, and click save.

Reviews must be approved by library staff before they are posted.

Brochure
Click here if you would like a brochure, in PDF format, that covers LibraryThing widgets in our catalog.

LibraryThing and Our Catalog Part 1

What is LibraryThing?
LibraryThing is a web application that allows people to create and share their personal book collections. To see an example, you can visit Diana Gabaldon’s LibraryThing collection. I've been using LibraryThing as my personal library organizer since 2006 and have been very impressed with it.

In addition to adding books to their collection, LibraryThing allows its users to write reviews, add tags to books, and compare their personal library with other users.

What is LibraryThing for Libraries?
LibraryThing aggregates all the personalization users add to their catalogs, such as tags and reviews, and sells this information to libraries. Unlike Novelist, LibraryThing will only link to books that our library district owns.

What Information in our catalog comes from LibraryThing?
LibraryThing “widgets” are found on the detailed information page for each book. They include:

• Similar Books
• Other Editions
• Reviews
• Shelf Browse
• Tags

The Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book offers a good example of all of these features.

Similar Books
One of our LibraryThing widgets is called “Similar Books.” However, this is a misnomer. Instead, these book lists are closer to an “if you like this book, you might also like . . .” list. Sometimes these books are actually similar to the current book but sometimes the books are just owned by the people with similar book collections. For example, consider the suggestions for Who Wants Candy? by Jane Sharrock. The suggestions are The Ultimate Candy Book, Candyfreak, Sweets, Candy and me, and Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot. Only the first suggestion, The Ultimate Candy Book, is a recipe book like Who Wants Candy?. However, those that like making candy may also enjoy reading about the history of candy which is where the other suggestions are useful. Clicking on any of the books listed will take you to more information on that book.

Other Editions
When viewing the detailed information for a title, LibraryThing will search our catalog to see if any other editions are available. If they are, LibraryThing will list these books in the left column. Clicking on the title of one of the books will take you to more information on it. This is particularly useful if your original book has no copies available for checkout. For an example, see Caught by Harlan Coben.

Shelf Browse
Shelf Browse is our newest LibraryThing feature. It allows you to virtually browse books similar to browsing books in a physical library. This is particularly useful for information books as similar subjects are often shelved near each other. For example, when I go to the detailed information for Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, it shows me the book covers for other books on solving sleep problems in children. Click Explore the virtual shelf browser: Full Screen to see even more books.

In my next post, I'll discuss LibraryThing Reviews and tags

Searching for a CD

A while back, I checked out a CD from Carbon Valley that I really enjoyed. In fact, I decided to return the CD and buy a copy for myself. However, I returned the CD before writing down the title of the artist. Over the weekend, I visited Carbon Valley with Calvin, my son, and decided I should try to hunt down the CD. I remembered that it was in the classical section so I started flipping through CDs. However, Calvin was getting impatient and I didn't feel like flipping through all of the CDs. Plus, I'd never find it if someone else had it checked out. I decided to try searching for it via our catalog.

Being the catalog sys admin, you'd think I would immediately have the perfect search strategy to find what I'm looking for. I remembered that one of the songs on the CD was "My Funny Valentine" which I'd also heard on Lullaby for my favorite insomniac by Ahn Trio. I knew that our catalogers usually include the individual songs on a CD in the "contents note" of the catalog record. So, I decided to try a Title Keyword search for "My Funny Valentine." I retrieved no relevant results, not even the CD by Ahn Trio. I decided that I must have remember the name of the song wrong so I went and looked up the Ahn Trio record. I had remembered the name of the song correctly. Suddenly, I realized that I had used the wrong search index. I felt kind of sheepish.

Originally, the Title Keyword for our public catalog would search the content notes of a record. However, searching this field can more than double the results for a simple keyword search. We decided that since most people are looking for the main title of a resource, it made sense to seperate out the content note from the main Title Keyword search index. We made this change several years ago. Now if people want to search the content note of a record, they need to use the Title and Content Keyword search. This search index will retrieve both title and content keyword matches. As a result, this is the index that I should have used.

Once I realized my mistake, I redid my search using the correct index. Even though I enclosed my search query in quotation marks, which forces it to search for the entire phrase, I still retrieved 36 results. I realized that if I used our adavanced search, I could narrow down this number significantly. Here's the steps I took:

• On the advanced search page, I clicked the drop down box and chose Title and Content Keyword.
• In the text box next to that index, I entered "My funny valentine", including the quotes.
• Under Location, I chose Carbon Valley Regional Library.
• Under Format, I selected "Music."
• I clicked the red arrow to start my search.

My search returned 9 results which was a much smaller number to scan. I scrolled down until I saw a title that sounded familar, Music from a farther room by Lucia Micarelli. Luckily, it was checked in so I quickly flipped through the "m" CDs in the classical music section and happily confirmed that this was the CD I had been searching for.

Suspend a Request

It's really nice to be able to put a request on books that are either currently checked out or are owned by another library. I'm always so excited by the vast number of books available within our district. However, sometimes the books become available when I'm on vacation or wouldn't have time to read them. This is where the "Suspend Request" feature is useful. This feature allows me to temporarily prevent a request from being put on the hold shelf for me. Instead, it goes to the next person in line. Once I reactivate the request, the system goes back to normal.

Reasons to suspend a request

• You're going on vacation and want to make sure the books don't expire on the hold shelf before you get back
• You have too many things checked out already and don't want items to be put on hold until you can check them out
• You've requested a TV Series but don't want it to come in until the weekend (Note, this is kind of like timing the stock market. It's not an exact science but it's worth a try.)

How to suspend a request

1. Go to our catalog and click on the My Account tab.
2. Enter your barcode and PIN and click Login
3. Click on the Holds link under My Account
4. Scroll down to the section labeled Requested items not yet available
5. Place a check mark next to every request you wish to suspend
6. Looks for the section that says, Suspend until: MM-DD-YYYY. Change the date to when you wish the requests to reactivate
7. Click the Change Status button

If our catalog successfully suspended the request, you should see the status next to the item change from "Active" to "Suspended."
Quirk Alert: Many people mistakenly believe that the date in the Expires column is the date your hold will reactivate. This is not correct. The "Expires" date is the date that your request will be deleted if you have not already received the requested item. Usually this will only occur if all copies of the resource have been lost.
Note: Once an item has an "In Transit" status, you can no longer suspend the request. It is too late to prevent it from being put on the hold shelf for you.

How to Reactivate a Request By default, requests will automatically reactivate on the date you specified when suspending the item. This date is not visible in our catalog but staff can look it up in our Horizon staff interface. However, you also have the option to manually reactivate your request.

1. Go to our catalog and click on the My Account tab.
2. Enter your barcode and PIN and click Login
3. Click on the Holds link under My Account
4. Scroll down to the section labeled Requested items not yet available
5. Place a check mark next to every request you wish to reactivate
6. Click the Change Status button. The requested item should now show a status of "Active."

Note: The Change Status button is a toggle button. If a request is suspended when you click it, the request will reactivate. However, if the request is currently active, clicking the Change Status button will suspend it until the date specified.

New Advanced Search Limits

Two new formats have been added to our advanced search page. You can now specifically search for both board books and ebooks.

Limiting by Board Books
My baby loves Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw. At the moment, we're limited to board books because I don't want to have to pay replacement fees for torn pages :) To find a list of other board books Nancy Shaw has written, I would do the following:

1. Navigate to the Advanced page in our catalog.
2. Next to Author Keyword enter Nancy Shaw. Note, since this is a keyword index, I can enter the author's name in any order I want instead of having to enter last name, first name.
3. In the Format box, highlight Books - Board Books.
4. Click the Red Arrow
to start the search.

Here are the results.

Limiting by eBooks
The eBook limit will retrieve results from our eBook collections which include books from Overdrive, Safari Tech Books Select, and Netlibrary. Let's say I was interested in finding eBooks about using my iPhone. This is how I would create my search:

1. Navigate to the Advanced page in our catalog.
2. Next to Subject Keyword enter iPhone.
3. In the Format box, highlight Books - eBooks.
4. Click the Red Arrow
to start the search.

Here are my results.