LibraryThing Adds Reviews to OPACs

LibraryThing, the social cataloging site that offers features to libraries like tag clouds and book recommendations, is expanding further into the social OPAC arena with the introduction of user reviews into LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL). The new Reviews Enhancement package gives patrons at subscribing institutions the ability both to read book reviews from other library users and add their own, all without leaving the library's online catalog.

More than 70 libraries have added the older Catalog Enhancements package to their OPACs, and a handful have been testing the new product, including the Mount Laurel Library, NJ. The reviews package features an initial outlay of 200,000 general user reviews loosely vetted for length and coherence ported over from LibraryThing.com, the company's original social cataloging enterprise. This starter set responds to problems facing many online social ventures: too little user-generated content to get off the ground. As LibraryThing founder Tim Spalding puts it, “Nothing kills people's incentive to review than a desert—like restaurants, emptiness begets emptiness and success success.”

More reviews, written by other patrons across the number of institutions subscribing to the LTFL Reviews Enhancement package, will make their way into the mix as more content is contributed.

For years, libraries have been enhancing their catalogs by adding participatory Web 2.0 features, but only recently have libraries and companies attempted to aggregate and share user-contributed data across institutional borders to make this content more useful.

The move by LibraryThing follows this growing trend of OPAC-based collectivized data distribution, as in new catalog interfaces like BiblioCommons and SOPAC 2.0 and the subscription distribution model of the competing reviews provider ChiliFresh.

End users and patrons who have added reviews through LTFL at their local library's online catalog also will be able to view and share those reviews via a Facebook application called “Reviews at My Library,” as well as through customizable blog widgets, described as a “chunk of code patrons can add to their blog to show off the reviews they've written.”

Offering a realistic view of the motivations behind many users' participation, Spalding commented, “People don't review books to help a library, or even their community. They do it to get something back—a record of what they read and an opportunity to express themselves—and express themselves to the people they know.”