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Next generation OPACs
Edited by Brad Eden
Introduction
LibraryThing is an online personal cataloging tool book lovers use to organize personal book collections (http://librarything.com). LibraryThing allows users to tag items with meaningful keyword descriptors, review items, browse others' holdings based on similarly-held items, browse books tagged with the same descriptor, and to create and contribute to groups. LibraryThing began to offer LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) in 2007. LTFL draws on the data stored in LibraryThing, and contributed by LibraryThing users. LTFL is an overlay for the OPAC; it consists of a snippet of Javascript residing in the OPAC's HTML code, that queries LibraryThing data by ISBN number as a user selects a bibliographic record. The Javascript then displays LibraryThing tags for the book, and a list of Similar Books (books in the OPAC with the same tags; see Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]). The LibraryThing tags are user-generated tags drawn from LibraryThing holdings, and are displayed in the OPAC as either as a tag cloud or a tag list. In the tag cloud display, tags that have been applied by other LibraryThing users appear in bold and in a larger font than less-popular tags. The tags are hyperlinked to a tag browser overlay, which lists tags used for that item, suggests related tags, and lists books in the OPAC that have the same LibraryThing tag (see Figure 2 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]). In the tag browser, clicking on a tag will list books identified with that tag, and clicking a book link will take the user back to the OPAC and the item's record therein. LTFL is a quick and easy way to insert a user-generated folksonomy into the OPAC without having to start from scratch and build a tag base over time. As of September 2008, LibraryThing had over 41 million tags for over 31 million titles (over 3.5 million of which are unique) coming from a user base of over 490,000 individuals (www.librarything.com/zeitgeist).
The Claremont University Consortium's Libraries of The Claremont Colleges serve the seven Claremont Colleges, a community of approximately 7,000 users. LibraryThing's introduction of LTFL in Spring 2007 coincided with the Claremont Libraries' desire to explore next-generation catalog tools. In May of 2007 the authors began discussing options,...