LibraryThing

December State of the Thing

2009-12-22T11:10:00.005-05:00

Last night I sent out November's State of the Thing, our monthly newsletter. Sign up to get it, or you can read a copy online.

This month's State of the Thing features a ton of new features, the SantaThing recap and free books.

We also have two exclusive author interviews:

Julie Powell first wrote Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen as a blog, which turned into a highly successful book, and a movie. Her new memoir, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, picks up with Julie heading upstate to learn the fine art of butchering, while shuttling back to New York to confront her marriage and the end of an affair.

Masha Hamilton is the author of four novels, including The Camel Bookmobile. Her new novel, 31 Hours, starts in New York City, where a mother with the age-old intuition that something is wrong chooses possible overreaction over inaction. The story then follows several connected paths to reveal one character's motives behind his desire to help carry out an act of terrorism in the very city he grew up.

Next month, we'll be interviewing Colum McCann and Josh Ferris . Have a question for them? Post it here and we might use it in the upcoming interview.

Recommending books—and series

2009-12-16T02:03:00.004-05:00

It's frequent for recommendations to include multiple books from the same series. So I've changed how recommendations display, to show these and get out of the way for other recommendations.

I also added recommendations to all Common Knowledge pages, so you can see aggregate recommendations for every series, award, place, character and so forth. For series, the results can be very good. Others can be strange, but are often quite cool.

This is another example of our continual effort to "unlearn" ecommerce, especially Amazon, conventions. Real people recommend series to each other—not to mention authors, genres, etc. Stores recommend discrete objects, because that's what they sell. LibraryThing, which strives be interesting and useful, not to sell things, can transcend these store limitations. We just need to realize they're there.

Come talk about it here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/79301

A new holiday for December: Do Nothing but Read Day

2009-12-15T12:23:00.000-05:00

Do Nothing but Read Day is this Sunday, December 20th.

It all started by a library science student wishing out loud that she could spend a day doing nothing but reading. She then started a blog to make it happen.

Here are the requirements:

you must read more than one book (they can be short, also short stories and audiobooks count!)

comfy clothing (jammies preferable)

no shoes (slippers are ok)

mugs of beverages and snacks

Optional:

sleepy cat(s)

blankies

Add the tag DNBRD2009 to whatever books you're going to read, and check out the tag page to see what others are going to be reading on Sunday!

The catch is that if you're reading all day, you can't post in the Talk thread about it on Sunday. So, go and discuss it now (and afterwards).

Augmented reality for LibraryThing Local

2009-12-15T11:38:00.005-05:00

See more screenshots. Yes, that's Portland new The Green Hand Bookshop!

LibraryThing programmer Mike has put together a LibraryThing "overlay" for the mobile phone app Layar. It draws on LibraryThing Local to show you the closest bookstores and libraries.

Layar turns your mobile device into an "augmented reality" window on the world. In our case, the app. shows you dots for local bookstores and libraries, so you can head in the right direction, as well as information about it.

Visit Apple's app store or the Android market to get it. Unfortunately, because it relies on the "compass," you'll need an iPhone 3GS (the new ones) or Android phone.

I'm somewhat skeptical of the augmented reality idea, at least until we have heads-up displays inside our eyeglasses. It doesn't help that Mike's Android phone has a misaligned compass. But Layar has map and list functions that are extremely useful. Travelers will be particularly impressed by the ability to land somewhere, and instantly know where the local bookstores are.

We have our own "Local Books" application coming out soon. We think it's going to be a big hit. Until then—and for the added kick of augmented reality—this is some pretty cool stuff.

Come let us know what you think.

Be a good Santa: pick books for SantaThing

2009-12-07T18:20:00.007-05:00

SantaThing is about to close! You have until 10pm EST to pick books for your Santa (or Santee, since you are the Santar).

You can see who your Santee is here. Look under the section "You choose the gift for:"

Click on the member's name to leave a comment with the title, author, ISBN and link to the choices. Be sure to note if your Santee has listed a bookseller preference.

In both of the past years, there were people who didn't pick for their Santa*. This year, we have a mobilized force of volunteers who will help pick books for those who have been abandoned. Join the group here. We'll start at 10pm when we close picking, and everyone will work until everyone has books!

*One thing to note: if you sign up someone else, as a gift recipient, the responsibility for your recipient's Santee is on you. You'll see one or more Santees in your You choose the gift for: section.

Give the gift of LibraryThing: Teeshirt sale and more!

2009-12-07T15:23:00.009-05:00

Don't know what gift to give your favorite bibliophile? Support reading habits, show readers in your life how much you care about their happiness, and give the gift of organization with the LibraryThing store.

We have LibraryThing teeshirts, on SALE! Normally, they're $15, but we're selling them for $9 until December 31st.

We also have cuecat barcode scanners ($15), stickers ($2) and gift accounts (yearly:$10, lifetime: $25)*. Who wouldn't like to receive a package with a cuecat cozily wrapped in a teeshirt? Another great pairing is a gift membership and a cuecat, for the post-holiday cataloging frenzy.

Shipping dates for delivery before December 25th:
December 21st: USPS First Class and Priority Mail shipping
December 11th: International shipping

We accept PayPal, credit cards, and even checks or money orders.

*Shipping is not included in the prices I quoted, but if you click on the links, you can figure out how much shipping costs based on your location and desired expediency.

December Early Reviewer books

2009-12-04T16:22:00.003-05:00

The December 2009 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 73 books this month, and a grand total of 1679 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Monday, December 21st at 6PM EST. It's earlier than usual, to account for all the end-of-the-year holidays.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to many many countries—too many to list here! Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Penguin	Baby Ice Dog Press	Weiser Books
Conari Press	Bloomsbury	Canongate Books
The University of Akron Press	The Permanent Press	Beacon Press
Henry Holt and Company	Faber and Faber	Hunter House
Bantam	Doubleday Books	Delacorte Press
Random House	Langdon Street Press	Bascom Hill Books
Random House Trade Paperbacks	St. Martin's Press	Putnam Books
W.W. Norton	Center Street	Cemetery Dance
Ballantine Books	North Atlantic Books	Faith Words
Hachette Book Group	HarperCollins	Riverhead Books
Rovira i Virgili University Press	Kregel Publications	Bethany House
Hesperus Press	Hyperion Books	Harper Paperbacks
HighBridge	Harper	Picador
Knopf Canada

Related Movies in Common Knowledge

2009-12-01T14:06:00.003-05:00

Chris has added a feature for related movies in Common Knowledge. Here's an example, from Romeo and Juliet.

The edit box "autocompletes" with suggestions by polling the IMDB API. Here's an example from Room with a View.

Come talk about it. We're still hashing out the best way to do it.

SantaThing sign-up closes in 24 hours

2009-11-30T15:05:00.008-05:00

SantaThing (LibraryThing's version of Secret Santa) is open for sign-ups until December 1, 4 pm EST (about 24 hours from now).

We already have over 400 members signed up to participate, and tons of helpful suggestions posted! If you don't want to be a Santa yourself, you can always help out by looking at the list of Santas and posting book suggestions.

To sign up, just go here and click "become a Secret Santa".

Tuesday afternoon, we'll match up Santas. We'll let you know via profile comments who your Secret Santa is, and you'll be able to pick books for them. Remember, if you signed up a gift recipient, you're responsible for picking their Santa's books. You'll get a profile comment for each Santa you signed up.

Picking will be open until Saturday, December 12 at 10 pm EST.

We're also planning a virtual soiree Saturday night and Sunday when the picking officially closes, to pick books for anyone whose Santa hadn't picked for them. I imagine it will involve LibraryThing members cozied up with eggnog by a toasty fire with a kitten* at their feet, making sure there are books picked for everyone. If you're interested, look for more information on the Talk thread for it.

* or whatever your preferred seasonal beverage, ambiance device and power animal may be

SantaThing and Giving

2009-11-24T21:20:00.005-05:00

In this year of a down economy, two developments with SantaThing, our "secret Santa for booklovers":

First, there was the Talk thread started by a member who got help last year to participate, when she needed it and, now that she doesn't, wanted to pay-it-forward and help someone else. This started a chain reaction, with more and more members offering to pay for someone. Other members have been asking for help, for themselves or sometimes for relatives, either in Talk or privately. The whole thing is pretty awesome.*

Today I was contacted by a member (who would like to remain anonymous) offering to pay for 20 SantaThings ($500), again for members who were planning to skip it because money was too tight. The money came out of the blue, and, despite the crescendo of giving, was quite a shock to us.

So, if you're interested in learning more about either giving or receiving SantaThing, read here.

Second, with all this giving, we're changing our mind. The SantaThing deal was $25 for $20 of books. The $5 was for shipping, and a little to cover staff time. But most of our shipping is now free. (We get it from from Amazon and the Book Depository, and Powell's is doing us a favor.**) And we're starting to feel seriously privileged to be involved in this!

So—to heck with it—we're getting rid of the margin. SantaThing is now $25 for $25. We'll make a little money when people can't quite fill the $25, and we'll spend it on the countries and bookstores that don't have free shipping. It's the least we can do.

You have until December 1 to sign up for SantaThing.

Sincerely,

Sonya and Tim

Links: SantaThing; Talk thread.

*I think "community" is an overused word online. Most "online communities" aren't. All those sites with employees known as "community managers" tick me off particularly. We like to think we're better than those sites, but, despite tons of friends, a marriage, occasional flash-mob cataloging, Legacy Libraries and even a group of members who now vacation together, I wouldn't even say LibraryThing is a real "community." It's more of a large, long-running cocktail party with a lot of rooms and some good friendships. But I can't help feeling cheered again by Clay Shirky's Love, Internet Style. Shirky writes that, looking forward, "You will make more accurate predictions about software... if you ask yourself not 'What's the business model?' but 'Do the people who like it take care of each other?'" Well, you do. And it's a pleasure to be part of it. — Tim
**We have Amazon Prime, and the Book Depository has free shipping. We're grateful to Powells for giving us free shipping for this effort. (Thanks to Darin for making it happen.)

November State of the Thing

2009-11-24T16:00:00.004-05:00

On Monday I sent out November's State of the Thing, our monthly newsletter. Sign up to get it, or you can read a copy online.

This month's State of the Thing features a synopsis of our newest features, opening SantaThing, free books and the announcement that Abby is moving over to head LibraryThing for Libraries, and I'm taking over Early Reviewers and Member Giveaways, author chats, site questions and State of the Thing.

We also have three exclusive author interviews:

Gregory Maguire, is the author of the popular Wicked and many other novels for both children and adults. Maguire published The Next Queen of Heaven with the Concord Free Press, a revolutionary "generosity-based" publisher.

Charles Cumming's new novel, Typhoon, is getting a lot of attention (he's touted as a successor of John le Carré). Cumming's intelligent thriller starts with the 1997 British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, and moves through to the lead-up to the Beijing Olympic Games.

Eugenia Kim is the author of The Calligrapher's Daughter, a story that encompasses a enthralling personal story, the roles of gender and class, and Korea's fight for independence and struggle with modernity.

Eugenia is also participating in an author chat (as well as giving away a signed copy of her book) with LibraryThing members from now until December 6th.

Next month, we'll be interviewing Julie Powell and Masha Hamilton. Have a question for them? Post it here and we might use it in the upcoming interview.

SantaThing has arrived!

2009-11-23T01:25:00.000-05:00

Now in its third year, I'd like to announce SantaThing!

What is SantaThing, you ask? SantaThing is Secret Santa for LibraryThing members.

The idea is simple. Pay $25. You play Santa to a random LibraryThing member, and find them up $20 worth of books, based on their library or a short description. Someone else does the same for you. LibraryThing orders the books and pays the shipping, and you get the joy of giving AND receiving!

You can sign up for yourself, but you can also buy in for anyone else–LibraryThing member or not. If the person doesn't have a LibraryThing account, make sure to mention what kinds of books they'd like, so their Secret Santa can choose wisely.

Even if you don't want to be a Santa, you can help by suggesting books for others.

New and exciting twists this year:
This year, we're offering you the option of some independent (and for some people local) booksellers, and WAY more countries can participate (see the full list). For the first and second annual SantaThings, we used Amazon as our bookseller, and registration was limited to those living in the US, UK, and Canada.

This is a huge new experiment, so please be understanding. We're trying to make SantaThing inclusive for other booksellers, with the hopes that next year we can throw the doors wide open.

In the United States, you can choose between Powell's (Portland, OR), Harvard Book Store (Cambridge, MA), The Book Table (Oak Park, IL), and Amazon.com. In Canada, your choices are Chapters Indigo, The Book Depository and Amazon.ca. In the UK, you get The Book Depository or Amazon.co.uk. All other countries get to use The Book Depository.

Here are the important notes:

The sign-up will close Tuesday, December 1st at 4pm Eastern time. Once the sign-up closes, you'll be able to use the same page to pick for your Santa.

Picking closes Friday, December 12th at 10pm Eastern time. Once the picking ends, the ordering begins, and we'll get all the books out to you as soon as we can. There's no guarantee that we'll have books out by December 25th, but we're going to try our darnedest.

Go sign up to become a Secret Santa now!

Questions? Ask them in this Talk topic.

The Books of Wikipedia

2009-11-22T22:30:00.003-05:00

UPDATE: I'm going to take another swipe at the data here. I've found too many places where it looks like citations aren't registering. I'll update when I can. Meanwhile, I'm moving the Secret Santa post to the top again. (Tim)

I've added a new "References" section to work pages, and within that a list of the Wikipedia articles that cite the work.

This feature comes from a complete parse of the English Wikipedia data dump, looking for citations and other references to books.

All told, the data covers 251,911 pages and includes 540,000 citations. They cover some 227,852 works. This is a marked improvement over 2007, when a similar effort found citations to LibraryThing works on only 90,136 pages. It's not perfect. I don't try to capture non-ISBN references in running text.* But it's interesting.** Come talk about it here.

Here are the top 100 books:

Top 100 Most-Frequenty Cited Books in the English Wikipedia
1.	2,122	Guinness World Records: British Hit Singles and Albums
2.	1,313	Andrews' Diseases of the Skin: Clinical Dermatology (James, Andrew's Disease of the Skin)
3.	1,231	Air Force Combat Units of World War II
4.	1,184	Jane's encyclopedia of aviation
5.	839	British parliamentary election results, 1918-1949
6.	764	The Ship of the Line: The Development of the Battlefleet, 1650-1850 (The Ship of the line)
7.	603	Handbook of British Chronology (Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, Volume 2)
8.	603	Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905
9.	591	The science-fantasy publishers: A critical and bibliographic history
10.	560	Civil War High Commands
11.	539	Wrestling Title Histories
12.	514	A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (2 volumes)
13.	504	The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature
14.	464	The Dinosauria
15.	463	The DC Comics Encyclopedia, Updated and Expanded Edition
16.	460	The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
17.	452	The Canadian directory of Parliament, 1867-1967
18.	442	All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948
19.	419	Air Force combat wings : lineage and honors histories, 1947-1977
20.	415	The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Through 1968; Volume 1: Who's Who A-L
21.	414	The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
22.	406	Fields of Praise: Official History of the Welsh Rugby Union, 1881-1981
23.	403	Birmingham City
24.	398	The New Grove Dictionary of Opera : A-D
25.	377	Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments
26.	371	Fitzpatrick's Dermatology In General Medicine (Two Vol. Set)
27.	362	NFL 2001 Record and Fact Book
28.	356	The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Animals: A Comprehensive Color Guide to Over 500 Specie
29.	348	The Pimlico Chronology of British History: From 250, 000 BC to the Present Day
30.	347	Michigan Place Names (Great Lakes Books)
31.	345	The Directory of Railway Stations: Details Every Public and Private Passenger Station, Halt, Platform and Stopping Place
32.	342	The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition
33.	341	Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand
34.	334	The Book of Sydney Suburbs
35.	331	The Men Who Made Gillingham Football Club
36.	331	Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants
37.	315	Oregon Geographic Names
38.	305	日本写真家事典―東京都写真美術館所蔵作家 (東京都写真美術館叢書)
39.	296	U.S. Submarines Through 1945: An Illustrated Design History
40.	294	Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns
41.	289	The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Through 1968: A Bibliographic Survey of the Fields of Science Fiction, F
42.	281	Reed New Zealand Atlas
43.	277	Music in the Renaissance
44.	277	Ohio Atlas and Gazetteer (Atlas and Gazetteer)
45.	273	Enzyklopädie des deutschen Ligafußballs 7. Vereinslexikon
46.	271	The Text of the New Testament an Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual
47.	268	Blackpool (Complete Record)
48.	266	The PFA Premier & Football League players' records, 1946-2005
49.	261	The Oxford Companion to Chess
50.	259	Dictionary of Minor Planet Names
51.	256	A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica (Comstock Book)
52.	251	Saints!: Complete Record of Southampton Football Club, 1885-1987
53.	247	Cassell's Chronology of World History: Dates, Events and Ideas That Made History
54.	247	The Book of Golden Discs
55.	243	Squadrons of the Royal Air Force and Commonwealth, 1918-88
56.	236	Retreat to the Reich: The German Defeat in France, 1944
57.	236	RAF Squadrons: A Comprehensive Record of the Movement and Equipment of All RAF Squadrons and Their Antecedents Since 191
58.	231	Australian Chart Book 1970-1992
59.	231	The Phoenix Book of International Rugby Records
60.	228	Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945
61.	224	US Air Force Air Power Directory
62.	222	Handbook of Inorganic Chemicals
63.	221	Rough Guide to World Music Volume Two: Latin and North America, the Caribbean, Asia & the Pacific (Rough Guide Music Gui
64.	219	In the Nick of Time: Motion Picture Sound Serials
65.	215	A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad and Tobago
66.	212	Encyclopedia of Fishes, Second Edition (Natural World)
67.	208	The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World
68.	205	The Kentucky Encyclopedia
69.	205	Arsenal Who's Who
70.	205	Guia de Catalunya. Tots els pobles i totes les comarques
71.	204	Armor Battles of the Waffen SS, 1943-45 (Stackpole Military History Series)
72.	203	Sixty Years of Arkham House: A History and Bibliography
73.	203	Indie Hits: The Complete UK Independent Charts 1980-1989
74.	201	The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics
75.	201	The geographic atlas of New Zealand
76.	201	The International Rugby Championship 1883-1983
77.	200	The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae (Virgin Encyclopedias of Popular Music)
78.	199	Arkham House Books: A Collector's Guide
79.	198	Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft
80.	196	Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906-1921 (Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, Vol 2)
81.	195	The fighting ships of the Rising Sun: The drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945
82.	192	Economics: Principles in Action
83.	191	New RHS Dictionary of Gardening
84.	190	Fungal Families of the World (Cabi Publishing)
85.	189	The Vertigo Encyclopedia
86.	188	Dermatology: 2-Volume Set
87.	187	The National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota: A Guide (Minnesota)
88.	187	Minding the House: A Biographical Guide to Prince Edward Island MLAs, 1873-1993
89.	186	Domesday Book: A Complete Translation (Alecto Historical Editions)
90.	186	The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile (3 Vol Set)
91.	185	Mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern : die höchstdekorierten Soldaten des Zweiten Weltkrieges
92.	184	The Mountains of England and Wales, Volume 1: Wales
93.	183	The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
94.	183	The Oxford Dictionary of Opera
95.	179	Generals in Blue Lives of the Union Commanders: Lives of the Union Commanders
96.	178	The Arkham House Companion: Fifty Years of Arkham House : A Bibliographical History and Collector's Price Guide to Arkha
97.	177	David and Charles Book of Castles
98.	175	Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music (Recent Releases)
99.	174	The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family
100.	171	Hot Dance/Disco 1974-2003
Source: LibraryThing.com

Here's the table above, in selectable form, in case you want to put it on your blog:

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" style="font-family: arial, verdana; font-size: 11px; border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;"><tr><td valign="top" colspan="3" style="padding: 6px; background-color: #444444; color: white; font-size: 12px;"><b>Top 100 Most-Frequenty Cited Books in the English Wikipedia</b></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">1.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">2,122</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3434208#references">Guinness World Records: British Hit Singles and Albums</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">2.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">1,313</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5402290#references">Andrews' Diseases of the Skin: Clinical Dermatology (James, Andrew's Disease of the Skin)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">3.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">1,231</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1074194#references">Air Force Combat Units of World War II</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">4.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">1,184</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/932863#references">Jane's encyclopedia of aviation</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">5.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">839</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5897391#references">British parliamentary election results, 1918-1949</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">6.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">764</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/963894#references">The Ship of the Line: The Development of the Battlefleet, 1650-1850 (The Ship of the line)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">7.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">603</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/496783#references">Handbook of British Chronology (Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, Volume 2)</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">8.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">603</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2925317#references">Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">9.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">591</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/686865#references">The science-fantasy publishers: A critical and bibliographic history</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">10.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">560</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1973381#references">Civil War High Commands</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">11.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">539</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/4574181#references">Wrestling Title Histories</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">12.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">514</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3067431#references">A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (2 volumes)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">13.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">504</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/758880#references">The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">14.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">464</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/340723#references">The Dinosauria</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">15.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">463</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6326154#references">The DC Comics Encyclopedia, Updated and Expanded Edition</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">16.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">460</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/528626#references">The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">17.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">452</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7978333#references">The Canadian directory of Parliament, 1867-1967</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">18.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">442</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3265329#references">All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">19.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">419</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1688457#references">Air Force combat wings : lineage and honors histories, 1947-1977</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">20.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">415</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2786521#references">The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Through 1968; Volume 1: Who's Who A-L</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">21.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">414</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1563195#references">The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">22.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">406</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2111902#references">Fields of Praise: Official History of the Welsh Rugby Union, 1881-1981</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">23.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">403</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6414171#references">Birmingham City</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">24.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">398</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6967980#references">The New Grove Dictionary of Opera : A-D</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">25.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">377</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/959234#references">Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">26.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">371</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/581407#references">Fitzpatrick's Dermatology In General Medicine (Two Vol. Set)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">27.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">362</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2480522#references">NFL 2001 Record and Fact Book</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">28.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">356</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5563484#references">The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Animals: A Comprehensive Color Guide to Over 500 Specie</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">29.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">348</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/204165#references">The Pimlico Chronology of British History: From 250, 000 BC to the Present Day</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">30.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">347</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1155704#references">Michigan Place Names (Great Lakes Books)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">31.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">345</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5415895#references">The Directory of Railway Stations: Details Every Public and Private Passenger Station, Halt, Platform and Stopping Place</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">32.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">342</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/23862#references">The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">33.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">341</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2257630#references">Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">34.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">334</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6648141#references">The Book of Sydney Suburbs</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">35.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">331</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7187125#references">The Men Who Made Gillingham Football Club</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">36.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">331</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/9087486#references">Register of Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">37.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">315</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/525678#references">Oregon Geographic Names</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">38.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">305</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8191540#references">日本写真家事典―東京都写真美術館所蔵作家 (東京都写真美術館叢書)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">39.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">296</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1687254#references">U.S. Submarines Through 1945: An Illustrated Design History</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">40.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">294</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1761084#references">Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">41.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">289</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/121059#references">The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy Through 1968: A Bibliographic Survey of the Fields of Science Fiction, F</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">42.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">281</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/4508751#references">Reed New Zealand Atlas</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">43.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">277</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/244233#references">Music in the Renaissance</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">44.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">277</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/366641#references">Ohio Atlas and Gazetteer (Atlas and Gazetteer)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">45.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">273</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3634752#references">Enzyklopädie des deutschen Ligafußballs 7. Vereinslexikon</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">46.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">271</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/131409#references">The Text of the New Testament an Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">47.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">268</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/4815156#references">Blackpool (Complete Record)</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">48.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">266</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5372591#references">The PFA Premier & Football League players' records, 1946-2005</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">49.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">261</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/151742#references">The Oxford Companion to Chess</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">50.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">259</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7099074#references">Dictionary of Minor Planet Names</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">51.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">256</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/202550#references">A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica (Comstock Book)</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">52.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">251</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7186976#references">Saints!: Complete Record of Southampton Football Club, 1885-1987</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">53.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">247</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/402074#references">Cassell's Chronology of World History: Dates, Events and Ideas That Made History</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">54.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">247</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/4315874#references">The Book of Golden Discs</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">55.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">243</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2806204#references">Squadrons of the Royal Air Force and Commonwealth, 1918-88</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">56.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">236</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/282134#references">Retreat to the Reich: The German Defeat in France, 1944</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">57.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">236</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1064331#references">RAF Squadrons: A Comprehensive Record of the Movement and Equipment of All RAF Squadrons and Their Antecedents Since 191</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">58.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">231</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3864927#references">Australian Chart Book 1970-1992</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">59.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">231</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8507814#references">The Phoenix Book of International Rugby Records</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">60.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">228</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1098512#references">Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">61.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">224</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/4099247#references">US Air Force Air Power Directory</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">62.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">222</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5222939#references">Handbook of Inorganic Chemicals</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">63.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">221</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/369814#references">Rough Guide to World Music Volume Two: Latin and North America, the Caribbean, Asia & the Pacific (Rough Guide Music Gui</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">64.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">219</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/2671758#references">In the Nick of Time: Motion Picture Sound Serials</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">65.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">215</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/607997#references">A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad and Tobago</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">66.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">212</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/4505898#references">Encyclopedia of Fishes, Second Edition (Natural World)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">67.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">208</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/464965#references">The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">68.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">205</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/366221#references">The Kentucky Encyclopedia</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">69.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">205</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7186966#references">Arsenal Who's Who</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">70.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">205</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8058133#references">Guia de Catalunya. Tots els pobles i totes les comarques</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">71.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">204</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/757779#references">Armor Battles of the Waffen SS, 1943-45 (Stackpole Military History Series)</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">72.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">203</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1387886#references">Sixty Years of Arkham House: A History and Bibliography</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">73.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">203</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6531494#references">Indie Hits: The Complete UK Independent Charts 1980-1989</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">74.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">201</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/464422#references">The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">75.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">201</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/7787295#references">The geographic atlas of New Zealand</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">76.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">201</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8503559#references">The International Rugby Championship 1883-1983</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">77.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">200</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5483374#references">The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae (Virgin Encyclopedias of Popular Music)</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">78.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">199</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1527324#references">Arkham House Books: A Collector's Guide</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">79.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">198</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/169604#references">Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">80.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">196</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/108190#references">Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1906-1921 (Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, Vol 2)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">81.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">195</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/547533#references">The fighting ships of the Rising Sun: The drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">82.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">192</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6341665#references">Economics: Principles in Action</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">83.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">191</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3408138#references">New RHS Dictionary of Gardening</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">84.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">190</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8075456#references">Fungal Families of the World (Cabi Publishing)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">85.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">189</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5727504#references">The Vertigo Encyclopedia</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">86.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">188</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6834757#references">Dermatology: 2-Volume Set</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">87.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">187</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3146659#references">The National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota: A Guide (Minnesota)</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">88.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">187</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/8596991#references">Minding the House: A Biographical Guide to Prince Edward Island MLAs, 1873-1993</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">89.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">186</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/538009#references">Domesday Book: A Complete Translation (Alecto Historical Editions)</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">90.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">186</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5508833#references">The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile (3 Vol Set)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">91.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">185</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/3850117#references">Mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern : die höchstdekorierten Soldaten des Zweiten Weltkrieges</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">92.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">184</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/1904370#references">The Mountains of England and Wales, Volume 1: Wales</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">93.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">183</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/44151#references">The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">94.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">183</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/397163#references">The Oxford Dictionary of Opera</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">95.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">179</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/321433#references">Generals in Blue Lives of the Union Commanders: Lives of the Union Commanders</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">96.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">178</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/120990#references">The Arkham House Companion: Fifty Years of Arkham House : A Bibliographical History and Collector's Price Guide to Arkha</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">97.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">177</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5388447#references">David and Charles Book of Castles</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">98.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">175</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/192095#references">Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music (Recent Releases)</a></td></tr><tr><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">99.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">174</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/125302#references">The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family</a></td></tr><tr style="background-color: #EEEEEE;"><td style="padding: 6px; color: gray;">100.</td><td align="right" valign="top" style="padding: 6px;">171</td><td  valign="top" style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/6976979#references">Hot Dance/Disco 1974-2003</a></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" align="right" colspan="3" style="padding: 6px; background-color: #DDDDDD; color: black;">Source: <a href="http://www.librarything.com" style="color: blue;">LibraryThing.com</a></td></tr></table>

*The parse used ISBNs, OCLC and LCCN numbers and title/author combinations, in both running text (for ISBNs) and citations. In 2007, I used titles and authors in running text. But this produces some false positives and, basically, would have tied up a server for a week.
**I don't want to start a fight, but I think the winners suggest alarming unevenness. They look like special cases—a bunch of devotees going citation-mad. While everyone knows Wikipedia is driven by passion, the theory is that large numbers and diverse viewpoints tamp down some of the excesses there. That said, I am going to take another crack at the data, hoping some of these effects diminish.

50,000 Venues in LibraryThing Local

2009-11-20T16:01:00.003-05:00

During our mad rush to add all the used book stores at Abebooks.com (see blog post) and all the Barnes & Noble stores (see Talk thread), Dan added the 50,000th entry into LibraryThing Local.

So what's http://www.librarything.com/venue/50000? It's Barnes & Noble in Morgantown, WV.

There's no photo up yet, if someone near Morgantown wants to go and take a picture with a piece of paper that says "50,000!" on it...

Your statistics: Ebooks and audiobooks

2009-11-18T19:50:00.002-05:00

Our recent ebook push had one major flaw—something was up with the profile statistics page.

That's been fixed, and the result is stunning. Instead of a few dozen ebooks, most users should see hundreds. My stats, for example, include fifteen LibriVox ebook editions, 45 Project Gutenberg editions and fully 99 Open Library editions—all free.

Check it out:

My ebooks: http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding/stats/ebooks
Your ebooks: http://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/ebooks

Local Book Search: A new way forward for bookselling

2009-11-16T13:00:00.005-05:00

We've just released a slew of new features (see overview). We hope members like them all, but Local Book Search is the most important. I won't mince words: it is intended to change bookselling forever.

The Idea. It's a simple idea: a location-based search for books. After all, you can ask Google for pizza where you live. But you can't do it with books, until now.

Just Show Me the Feature! Here are some sample links:

Imagine if all the bookstores and libraries in central London were searchable.

The Vision. More and more people look to the web, even for local information. I can't remember the last time I checked a newspaper for movie times or local music. Bookstores, however, have largely stayed off the "local web." Those that expose their holdings do it inconveniently. Many don't at all, either because their systems are old, or on principle. And nobody has ever tried to tie it all together, like Local Book Search attempts to do.

Physical bookstores often complain about online prices, but a lot of the problem is just convenience. If I lived in San Fransisco and wanted a copy of Steinbeck's The Moon is Down, I probably wouldn't bother to call up all my local bookstores; Amazon is quick and easy, and will surely have it. Local Book Search find a half dozen copies, new and used, in just seconds.

At a minimum, this is a cool test. Maybe bookstores will prefer to keep their holdings information to themselves and shut us out. A bookstore near me won't participate because they think the information is "valuable" and, if it were online, "people would know what we don't have." I think that sort of thinking is the road to a world without bookstores.

Online bookselling is here to stay. It's a wonderful thing. Same-day online delivery, as recently offered by Amazon, is something new. But physical book stores are also very important. We hope local book search can be one of the things they need to survive and prosper.

Who are you searching? The list currently stands as follows:

800 or so, mostly used, bookstores from Abebooks.com
402 Borders (US) stores
300 Waterstones (UK) stores
250 Indigo, Indigo Spirit, Chapters and Coles stores in Canada
40 library systems that use LibraryThing for Libraries. (We hope to convince all 160 to participate.)
40 Blackwell (UK) stores
4 Shakespeare and Company (NYC) stores
4 Powell's stores (Portland)
3 Tattered Covers stores (Colorado)
The Strand in New York City
Harvard Books (Cambridge, MA)
Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA)
Foyles (London)
City Lights in Sylva, NC (they rock)

How are you doing it? We're doing it in a mix of ways. A number of bookstores, including Powells, Porter Square and City Lights, send us their files. We have special permission from Abebooks too, so we pre-parse the Abebooks sellers.* (Members have helped us connect them to LibraryThing.) Indigo/Chapters gave us their blessing, and a convenient way to do it.

The rest involve just-in-time searches. Every system is different, so we've written a special connector for each, but the usual pattern is some sort of multiple-ISBN fetch. In every case, we've obeyed a site's "robots.txt" file--going only where we're allowed, and hitting a website no faster than once per second. That's also why we've stayed off some biggies, like Barnes and Noble--their store holdings pages are prohibited by robots.txt.

Why aren't there more indies? We introduced basic bookstore integration back in 2006 (!), taking only indies. It never really took off, because we couldn't convince IndieBound to offer access to the files, and, I think, asking booksellers to upload their file to IndieBound and then LibraryThing was a hard sell.

Since then, we've pushed hard to get indies involves, with no success. We even lost our first participant, when Ann Arbor's Shaman Drum went out of business. Those who follow our Twitter stream will remember a lot of hand-wringing over the topic. (In fairness, IndieBound has expressed interest, but they are still working on their platform.) So, we went and did it outselves, with whom we could.

The "connectors" all take about the same amount of time, whether we pick up 400 stores in Borders, or a single store in the Strand. So, by time, we've spent most of it integrating with indies. We have a decent list of other indies to add, when we get the chance.

The Future. Obviously, we know this is bigger than LibraryThing. If you have an idea about where it should go, chances are we've had it too. We're working on it.

We are, incidentally, aware that we're weak on the library front. We have 40 libraries now and, if all LibraryThing for Libraries sites agreed, we could get up to 170 systems (more than 1600 buildings). Unfortunately, you can't really screen-scrape most library systems; they tend to break under the strain. Nobody really has the data necessary, except perhaps for OCLC.

So, OCLC, how about it? Our peanut butter. Your chocolate. Don't libraries deserve to be part of this? Can we let bygones be bygones?

What we need? Bookstores who want to participate should send me an email (tim@librarything.com) or a Tweet (@LibraryThingTim).

Bookstores concerned about LibraryThing servers hitting them too hard should also write us. We're keeping close tabs on how often we scrape sites. (We also cache results for 24 hours.) In many cases, we could do it more efficiently, if we were allowed to access search pages, not just product pages. And we can try fewer ISBNs. Or, if you are able, we can parse your files and never hit your site.

All told, we think the traffic is good for you—it will get you sales. But we are conscious of limited technology budgets, and will work with you to increase the benefit, and decrease the potential cost.

Kudos. Thanks are owed to:

LibraryThing members who are helping us connect Abebooks to LibraryThing.
Abebooks. In theory, local book search could cut them out of the equation, as people walked into a store, instead of buying online. But they saw it as a valuable service to their members, and an overall win. Abebooks deserves applause for taking a risk.
Indigo/Chapters. Every time I deal with them, I marvel at how easy they make things. No meetings, just agreement to test it out. Indigo, like Abe, is Canadian. Is there something in the water?
Powell's, Porter Square Book and (tiny) City Lights Books in Sylva, NC deserve thanks for being with us from the first. Because their method--sending us files--is so much easier for us, we're planning to create some special features for them.
Programemrs Chris and Mike, and non-programmers Dan and Stephanie. The "Get this Book" and "Local Book Search" project took over two months, and involved huge amounts of new code, and also data entry. As Chris remarked, for most companies, "this would be a site." It is an awesome achievement.

Come talk about it. Come talk about all this on Talk.

*Abebooks.com sellers already total over 1 million books, and we haven't caught up with all the Abe-to-LibraryThing work members have done. We think they'll end up around 1.5 million books total.

New Feature: Get this Book

2009-11-16T02:57:00.004-05:00

This post does not discuss what I consider what may be the most innovative and promising new feature, Local Book Search. I'll get to that in the morning. (See it in action.)

Over the night we added a small avalache of features (for a list of Talk posts, see the top of this post.) This post talks about the "Get this book" feature.

Show me the feature! Check the Get this Book feature for Romeo and Juliet. Then come discuss this here.

Why the new features? For years now we've had a feature called "Buy, Borrow and Swap"—involved bookstore and library links, and integration with swap sites.

Two things moved us replace this feature:

We wanted to make it better—to integrate with as many sources as possible, so we show people what was out there, and send people to links that existed, not a lot of blind links to pages that might or might not exist. First, as discussed here, Amazon tightened up its linking policy, forcing changes.
Amazon required it. As a site that uses Amazon data (although we also use some 690 other sources), we had to follow their rules, which required us to drop links to competitor sites, except on secondary pages. We didn't want this to be a net loss for the site, so we decided to make the best secondary pages we could imagine. (Three programmers kept imagining for two months straight, and this is what came out.)

The new pages are accessible from any work page, and are pictured at the right.

Ebooks. Another book site integrated with a single attractive, but not comprehensive ebook supplier. So we decided to integrate with fourteen. We've included both pay sites (Kindle, Sony Reader) and free sites (Project Gutenberg, Hathi Trust).

Not pictured:

The integration is deep. For Hathi alone, we've linked 398,000 LibraryThing works, and OpenLibrary adds another 178,000 full scans. Because our catalog is so vast, and our data so "ratty" (it comes from over 690 source), LibraryThing can do a lot better than parsing ISBNs. This is how we connect to so many ISBN-less sources. My favorite is the Online Books Page, which collects links to some 30,000 books found here and there online, mostly one-off scanning projects at universities and the like.

There are, of course, more. We're not parsing Barnes and Noble ebooks—which will become important if the "Nook" takes off. If you don't see your favorite source, let us know. We'll work to add it.

Audiobooks. I haven't taken to ebooks yet. (For starters, my reader is broken.) But I listen to a lot of audiobooks. For people like me we've added links to three audiobook suppliers—Audible, iTunes and the wonderful, free, amateur-driven project LibriVox.

Live Price Comparison from BookFinder.com. Many of you use the price-comparison site BookFinder.com, so, with their help, we decided to integrate a good piece of it into the site itself. BookFinder reaches out to dozens of new and used booksellers, and comes back with good deals and rare buys.

Live results are a core principle of the site, so caching is for as little time as possible. The results are also distinguished by being cross-edition—a fairly new concept in price comparison. You can change the ISBNs or titles BookFinder uses, to get price-comparison that fits you best.

Swap sites. Swap-site integration has been with LibraryThing for some time now. We've spiffed it up, and added a long-missing site, PaperBackSwap.com. As a lot of members belong to more than one site, gathering them all together like this should be valuable.

All Sources. "Get this book" are just the best slices of a much larger pie. Check out All Sources (here, for Romeo and Juliet) to get all the sources. As with other parts of the site, the data is fundamentally under your control. If you don't see your favorite bookseller or book database, go ahead and enter it. We also want help improving the data.

Your Quick Links area is editable. To edit it, check out Edit Quick Links, which looks like "All Sources," but works a little different.

What's missing. Here's how we plan to improve the page, and how you can improve it too.

Members need to be able to add new ebooks.
We need more ebook sources. Seventeen is great. There are probably thirty we should have.
A lot of sources need improvement; they don't have all the link types they could have.
We have second slate of "book database" integrations coming up, including a full conversion of all Wikipedia citations.

Come talk about the new features here.

Help put used bookstores on LibraryThing

2009-11-15T20:48:00.003-05:00

We're about to push a slew of new "local" features, including the first-ever "local book search." To make this as good as it can be, we need to connect as many bookstores as possible to the LibraryThing Local system. We previously asked for help with IndieBound stores. We're now asking for help with a really hairy category category—used bookstores.

Check out this page and pitch in: Help put used bookstores on LibraryThing

It lists all Abebooks.com booksellers—mostly, but not exclusively used—and allows LibraryThing members to connect them to LibraryThing Local venus. Once connected, the local page gets a link to their Abebooks page, and is entered into our upcoming Local Book Search feature.

I'd like to thank Abebooks for cooperation here—allowing us to include results from their affiliates. I say "generously" because "local search" has the potential to cut Abebooks out of the transaction. They feel—and I think they're right—that the loss will be small, and will be offset by the value of giving their affiliates another way to expose themselves to the world, and book lovers another way to discover their books.

As usual, we have a Talk discussion going on about this—how best to do it, etc.

Update: We pushed this a few hours ago, and the response is already huge—more than 130 linkings, by two dozen members. As with IndieBound, I'm in shock at how readily members take up the call. We won't let you down—the upcoming feature is going to be great, and all the better for this work.

Free movie passes to "The Road" in Detroit and Philadelphia

2009-11-12T10:58:00.007-05:00

The folks who are bringing Cormac McCarthy's The Road to the big screen are inviting LibraryThing members to attend free advance screenings of the new movie.

You can start speculating on the adaptation now, in the Made Into a Movie and Book vs Movie groups. This was one of those books I bought so I could loan out. I can't wait to find out what the attendees think.

There are two screenings, with limited seating. Tickets will be given out to the first-emailed, first-served.

Philadelphia (downtown)
Sunday, November 15th at 7:30 pm

Detroit area (Novi, MI)
Thursday, November 19th at 7 pm

If you live in either area, and are interested in attending, email Holly Cara Price (hcp@ddanielspr.net). It's first-come, first serve, so email her ASAP if you'd like to go. Holly will email you instructions on tickets and the theater location.

For the rest of us, the movie will be released November 25th: http://theroad-movie.com/

Here's the movie synopsis:
From Cormac McCarthy, author of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, comes the highly anticipated big screen adaptation of the beloved, best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, THE ROAD. Academy Award-nominee Viggo Mortensen leads a distinguished cast featuring Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron, Academy Award-winner Robert Duvall, Michael Kenneth Williams, Molly Parker, Guy Pearce and young newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee in this epic post-apocalyptic tale of the survival of a father (Mortensen) and his young son (Smit-McPhee) as they journey across a barren American landscape that has been destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm. THE ROAD boldly imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of - a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love and an unshakable morality even in the face of total devastation.

Directed by John Hillcoat

Update 11/13/09:

Today in the Wall Street Journal is an incredible, lengthy interview that Cormac McCarthy. The writer spent a record 7 hours with McCarthy talking about the film, the book, and life in general.

November Early Reviewer books

2009-11-06T15:54:00.002-05:00

The November 2009 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 102 books this month, and a grand total of 3571 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Saturday, November 28th at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to many many countries—too many to list here! Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Kensington Publishing	Dafina	Citadel Press
Bell Bridge Books	The Permanent Press	Open Letter
Penguin	Red Hen Press	Bloomsbury
W.W. Norton	Bantam	Ballantine Books
International Publishers Marketing	Human Kinetics	St. Martin's Paperbacks
St. Martin's Griffin	Weiser Books	Conari Press
Tor Books	Universalis Publishing	Doubleday Books
O'Reilly	South Dakota State Historical Society Press	HarperCollins
Bascom Hill Books	Rovira i Virgili University Press	Bethany House
Small Beer Press	Little, Brown and Company	Grand Central Publishing
St. Martin's Press	Orca Book Publishers	Picador
Pocket Books	Avon Books	Harper Paperbacks
Viking Books	Putnam Books	Random House
Henry Holt and Company	Faber and Faber

The Concord Free Press, Gregory Maguire, and "generosity-based publishing"

2009-10-29T15:34:00.003-04:00

The Concord Free Press is a revolutionary new publisher, doing some fantastic things. They publish books and give them away. For free. All they ask is that the reader then makes a voluntary donation to a local charity or person in need. And then pass the book along to someone else (this is definitely the hard part), and ask that they too read, donate, and pass. I think it's fantastic. They just hit their one-year anniversary, released their third book, and have recorded more than $90,000 in donations so far (you can see a record of donations on their site).

Their third book, The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire just came out last week, and the Concord Free Press (founded by novelist Stona Fitch) gave us 14 copies to circulate among LibraryThing members. The book is great—a departure from Maguire's typical writing (which I also love).

Book description from the Concord Free Press website:

Set in the grotty upstate town of Thebes, The Next Queen of Heaven is a Christmas tale gone horribly wrong. Clocked by a Catholic statuette, Mrs. Leontina Scales starts speaking in tongues. Tabitha Scales and her brothers scheme to save their mother or surrender her to Jesus—whatever comes first. Meanwhile, choir director Jeremy Carr, caught between lust and ambition, fumbles his way toward Y2K.

Only a modern master like Gregory Maguire can spin a tale this frantic, funny, and farcical. Novelist Ann Patchett calls it “an out-of-control carnival ride—terrifying, thrilling, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.” And we agree.

I'm putting the copies in Member Giveaways, and we'll send them to anyone, anywhere around the world. Request a copy now, if you're interested! And remember, when you're done reading, you donate, and then pass the book along. We're hoping we can keep the books circulating among LibraryThing members—since the Concord Free Press only prints a limited run (2,500 copies), many people won't otherwise get a chance to read it.

As it says on the back of the book:

"This novel is free. By taking a copy, you agree to give away money to a local charity, someone who needs it, or a stranger on the street. Where the money goes and how much you give—that's your call. When you're done, pass this novel on to someone else (for free, of course), so they can give. It adds up."

So if you win a copy, please remember to read, donate, and then pass it along (maybe even put it back on Member Giveaways, so another LibraryThing member can have a chance to read it).

October State of the Thing

2009-10-26T09:10:00.003-04:00

I just sent out October's State of the Thing, our monthly newsletter. Sign up to get it, or you can read a copy online.

This month's State of the Thing features 2 exclusive author interviews:

Allison Hoover Bartlett, is the author of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession. Bartlett digs into the true-crime story of John Gilkey, the obsessed rare book thief and Ken Sanders, the self-appointed "bibliodick" driven to catch him.

Hope Edelman's newest book is The Possibility of Everything, a memoir about a week in 2000 when she traveled to Belize with her husband and three-year-old daughter to visit a shaman.

Both Hope and Allison are also participating in chats with LibraryThing members right now—stop by and ask them questions here.

Next month, one of the interviewees we have lined up is Gregory Maguire. Got a question for him? Post it here and we might use it in the upcoming interview.

October Early Reviewer Books

2009-10-06T09:24:00.003-04:00

The October 2009 batch of Early Reviewer books is up! We've got 55 books this month, and a grand total of 1590 copies to give out.

First, make sure to sign up for Early Reviewers. If you've already signed up, please check your mailing address and make sure it's correct.

Then request away! The list of available books is here:
http://www.librarything.com/er/list

The deadline to request a copy is Friday, October 23rd at 6PM EST.

Eligiblity: Publishers do things country-by-country. This month we have publishers who can send books to the US, Canada, the UK, Israel, Australia, France, Germany, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Make sure to check the flags by each book to see if it can be sent to your country.

Catalan books. A special treat this month–we have a Catalan publisher (Rovira i Virgili University Press) participating, who is offering a few books in Catalan! There are only 5 copies available for each of the books from Rovira i Virgili University Press, since they're testing the waters to see what kind of audience there will be for Catalan books.

And of course, thanks to all the publishers participating this month!

Kensington Publishing	Dafina	Citadel Press
B&H Publishing Group	Bleak House Books	South Dakota State Historical Society Press
Delacorte Press	New York Review Books	New American Library
Little, Brown and Company	Barbour Books	Rovira i Virgili University Press
Self-Counsel Press	5 Spot	The Permanent Press
Hunter House	Harper Paperbacks	Avon Books
Random House	Springer	Faber and Faber
Picador	Open Letter	York House Press
Bloomsbury	Orca Book Publishers	Timber Press
Bethany House	Bell Bridge Books	Doubleday Books
HarperCollins

Flash-mob cataloging party in Canton, OH

2009-09-24T12:06:00.002-04:00

The Canton Museum of Art in Ohio (CantonArt.org, CantonArt on LT) is having a flash-mob catalog party. More about flash-mob cataloging.

Details:
Saturday October 3, 2009, 10:30am - 2:30pm and Sunday October 4, 2009, 1:30pm - 4:30pm

Canton Museum of Art
1001 Market Ave.
Canton, OH 44702

Space is somewhat limited, so please RSVP: Troy at talpeterkent.edu

Troy says: We will have tasty food and beverages. Participants should help us be “green” and bring your own mug (with your name and phone number on it). We will have valuable door-prizes throughout the day! Bring your Laptop, NetBook, iPhone/iPod Touch to help catalog, or just show up and help move things along.

The talk post.

Geeks vs. Nerds: Hard data

2009-09-24T02:40:00.004-04:00

LibraryThing's systems administrator, John Dalton, came up with this—using LibraryThing's tagmash feature to demonstrate the difference between geeks and nerds:

See also: