Dear winways,
Welcome to the April 2015 State of the Thing! This month, we've got a handful of new features (mostly for your catalog), our Edible Books Contest winners, and a couple of new Legacy Libraries projects in the works.
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Edible Books Contest Winners
Our FOURTH Annual Edible Books Contest featured some truly impressive and delicious treats. Contestants submitted dishes inspired by works spanning decades and genres, sometimes even in one submission! Grand prize winner W.MdO served up the amazing iced sugar cookie book covers pictured here.
Our first runner-up is powerfulpotentiality, whose cake rendition of Magyk looks good enough to read—ahem, eat! Rounding out the top three is our second runner-up, gofergrl84, who brought the Hyperbole and a Half piece "The God of Cake" to life.
Come congratulate our winners on the blog, or check out the "EdibleBooks2015" tag gallery to see an impressive batch of literary delights! Congrats to all our winners, and thanks to everyone who shared their treats with us!
New Features
Search Your Library with a CueCat. As many of you know, we sell old, affordable barcode scanner called a "CueCat", which LT members have long been using to scan books into their libraries. We've now added the ability to search your library (or the site, if you like) using the CueCat scanner, as well! Just be sure to put your cursor in the "Search your library" box in the upper right corner on the Your Books page, and scan it with your CueCat. If you have any questions or trouble with searching with your CueCat, come let us know on Talk.
Number of Tags Field. Ever wondered just how many tags you've added to a given book in your library? Now you can see and display that information in your catalog. Simply head over to the the Display styles options from the Settings page, and add the "Number of tags" field to your favorite display style—you'll find it under "Miscellaneous" in the right-hand menu. How many tags do your books have? Come tell us about it on Talk.
LT Book ID and Work ID Fields. Each individual work on LT has a Work ID, the unique identifier automatically assigned each time a completely new work is introduced to our system. Similarly, every copy of every book has its own unique identifier—a Book ID. Previously you could find these by heading to a given work or book page. For example, the URL for my copy of Guards! Guards! is www.librarything.com/work/1044159/book/101217040. The Work ID for all copies of Guards! Guards! is 1044159, and the Book ID for my copy is 101217040. Now you can add these IDs to your library. Again, just head over to the Display styles settings, and add the "LT book ID" and/or "LT work ID" field(s) to your favorite display style. They're under the "Miscellaneous" category in the right-hand menu. Questions or comments? Post them on Talk!
Talk of the Thing
Legacy Libraries: What do Edward Gorey and Jacques Derrida have in common? LT's Legacy Libraries project relies on volunteers to collect and catalog the libraries of historical people (it began with Thomas Jefferson's library, back in 2007). In the last week, sources for library info for macabre author/illustrator Edward Gorey and philosopher Jacques Derrida. Come check out the Legacy Libraries group and help us catalog! Here's the Edward Gorey thread and Jacques Derrida thread, respectively.
Reading and Judging. There's a lively debate/discussion over at Book talk right now, regarding having opinions on what others read, and judging a reader by their book. Are there "guilty pleasure" reads? In this day and age, can we make quantifiable judgments on the quality of one book, author, etc. over another? Can we do so without passing judgment on readers? Come share your thoughts on Talk.
Free Books: Early Reviewers
You are not currently signed up for LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. You are missing out!
Early Reviewers offers free books to members—about 100 titles a month! Since 2007, we've given out over 160,000 books. The catch? Publishes want your honest review. How you review a book won't help or hurt your chances of winning books in the future, but not reviewing your winning will.
» Sign up for Early Reviewers
The April batch of Early Reviewers books contains 3,130 copies of 116 different titles. The deadline to request a free book is Monday, April 27th at 6pm, Eastern. Look for the May batch around the 4th.
The most requested books so far from the April batch:
More free books: Member Giveaways
At any given time, there are hundreds of books available from our Member Giveaways program. It's like Early Reviewers, but isn't limited to select publishers—any author or member can post books. Request books, or offer your own!
Hot titles this month
- The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
- The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
- We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
- Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
- Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
- Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
That's it for this month! I'll see you all in May.
Questions, comments, ideas? Send them my way.
—Loranne (loranne@librarything.com)
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