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Archive for the ‘event’ Category

LibraryThing’s 12th Annual Holiday Card Exchange

The 12th annual LibraryThing Holiday Card Exchange is here!

Here’s how it works:

» Sign up for the LibrayThing Holiday Card Exchange now

Sign-ups for the Card Exchange close Tuesday, December 2 at 12:00pm Eastern (17:00 GMT). We’ll inform you of your matches within an hour or so after signups close, so you can get those cards in the mail.

Questions? Join the discussion on Talk.

Labels: card exchange, event, holiday

LibraryThing’s 10th Annual Holiday Card Exchange

The 10th annual LibraryThing Holiday Card Exchange is here!

Here’s how it works:

» Sign up for the LibrayThing Holiday Card Exchange now

Sign-ups for the Card Exchange close Tuesday, December 5 at 12:00pm Eastern (17:00 GMT). We’ll inform you of your matches within an hour or so after we close. Send your cards out soon after.

Questions? Join the discussion on Talk.

Labels: card exchange, event, holiday

9th Annual LibraryThing Holiday Card Exchange

The 9th annual LibraryThing Holiday Card Exchange is here!

How it works:

» Sign up for the LibrayThing Holiday Card Exchange now

Sign-ups for the Card Exchange closes Wednesday, December 7th at 12:00 PM Eastern (17:00 GMT). We’ll inform you of your matches within an hour or so after we close. Send your cards out soon after.

Questions? Join the discussion on Talk.

* In order for the cards you receive to be addressed to your real name, you must include your name in the address box. Some postal services require that addressee names match what’s on your mailbox.

Labels: card exchange, event, holiday

New: Add Events API

The Add Events API adds events to the LibraryThing Local events system using a simple “RESTful” API.

You can also find this on WikiThing: Add Events API

Come Talk about the API here.

The Request

Each Add Events request consists of a single http request, with all parameters specified in the URL. There is no ganging of requests.

There is no separate API to update events. If the system finds an event for the same venue at the same time and added by you, it replaces it with the new one.

Here is a sample request with the parameters broken out onto separate lines.

http://www.librarything.com/api_eventadd.php? title=Spring+Author+Series &description=A+reading+from+Every+Visible+Thing+by+Lisa+Carey. &isbns=0060937424,0380815591 &time=2012-12-1+11:00 &venue=2427 &userid=timspalding &developerkey=[omitted] &addevent=1

You can try out this request [http://www.librarything.com/api/eventadd.php?title=Spring+Author+Series&description=A+reading+from+Every+Visible+Thing+by+Lisa+Carey.&isbns=0060937424,0380815591&time=2012-12-1+11:00&venue=2427&userid=timspalding&developerkey=%5Bomitted%5D&addevent=1 by hitting this URL]. Don’t worry, it won’t add a new event.

Basic parameters

title. The title of the event.

time. The date and time of the event, preferably in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM (eg., 2012-12-01 14:00).

Ideally the HH:MM should be in 24-hour (or “military”) format, although you can also append “AM” or “PM.” All times should be local time; not include timezone data, or it will throw off the time calculation as it attempts to square it with LibraryThing’s timezone.

description. The description of the event. Works and authors should NOT be touchstones in the description.

isbns (optional). A comma-separated list of ISBNs relevant to the entry. LibraryThing uses these to retrieve all potential work titles and author names implicated in the description, and creates touchstones as appropriate.

ISBNs are not only for works, but also for authors. For example, if an author is delivering a talk but not reading from any specific work, referencing one of their ISBNs will still ensure that their name in the description gets turned into a touchstone.

eventurl (optional). URL of the event at the venue’s website.

mediaurl (optional). Archived media of the event (for past events only).

Basic parameters

There are two ways of finding the venue. You must use one or the other.

venue. If you know the LibraryThing venue id, use the venue= parameter.

The LibraryThing venue id is located in venue URLs. For example, [http://www.librarything.com/venue/924/Strand-Bookstore http://www.librarything.com/venue/924/Strand-Bookstore\] has the venue id 924.

venuesearchtype, venuesearchdata and venuesearchexact. Using these two parameters you instruct LibraryThing to search for a venue. If exactly one venue is found, it will go ahead and choose it, and add the event. At present there are four venuesearchtype options.

*phone. Searches the venue’s phone number. All non-numbers are ignored (ie., 207-555-1212 is the same as 207.555.1212, etc.).

*twitter. Searches the venue’s Twitter handle, if they have one.

*email. Searches for the email.

*name. Searches the venue name.

venuesearchdata is the search string.

venuesearchexact is whether to do a match on partial searches (ie., “Strand” matching “Strand Bookstore,” “Strand Book Annex,” “The Strand Bookshop,” etc.).

Your information

userid. Your LibraryThing userid (ie., timspalding).

developerkey. Developer key. This can be found at http://www.librarything.com/services/keys.php . If you are not a registered developer, you can sign up and get your developer key in less than a minute.

Making it happen

addevent. To make it add the event, rather than just test the system and see an XML response, set addevent=1. Constructing http requests without addevent is a good way to test out the system.

The Response

Requests to the Add Events API return an XML response, recapitulating the event, reporting on errors or warning and listing the status of “added,” “replaced” or “not added.” The <touchstones> are lets you see whether your ISBNs were successfully turned into touchstones.

replaced 305621 Spring Author Series LibraryThing H.Q. 2012-12-01 11:00 AM A reading from [Every Visible Thing] by [[Lisa Carey]]. [Every Visible Thing] careylisa 3702986 [[Lisa Carey]] careylisa

Labels: apis, bookstores, event

Hunger Games box set winner!

Chosen randomly from over 200 comments on the blog post, the winner of the Hunger Games box set is blueAframe! Thanks to everyone who posted a comment.

Although some of the comments were not visible on the blog post, I assure you I had access to all of them on the admin side, and randomly chose from the entire set of contestants who submitted their comment before the deadline. I keep everyone’s interest in mind, as opposed to President Snow.

Labels: event

Operation (LibraryThing) Paperback

The gist is this: donate your gently used books directly to troops stationed overseas, with inexpensive shipping thanks to media rate postage and the fact that overseas APO/FPO addresses are charged the same rates as the US.

The 75 Books Challenge for 2010 group came up with a fantastic idea: they are challenging themselves to collectively donate 75 books through Operation Paperback before the end of 2010. Then they decided it would be more fun to open the challenge up to everyone at LibraryThing, to see if we can collect ten times their initial challenge–750 books.

Operation Paperback is a non-profit that organizes the collection of books to send to American troops* deployed overseas. Considering we’re a site devoted to the love of reading and books, I think it’s only fair we share! It’s a win-win, giving books to troops who otherwise don’t have access to leisure reading, and making space on your shelves for more books! Sign up on the Operation Paperback site to send some books (they’ll tell you how and where to send them), then list them here, so we can work towards the goal if 750 books. Check the LibraryThing Operation Paperback page to see what books we’ve sent.

You can read about which genres are most popular**, how the shipping works and what else you can do to brighten the day of folks who are far from home, on the Operation Paperback FAQ page. They say that a box of 20 paperbacks cost about $5 to ship to any military address.

Operation Paperback needs help spreading the word among troops that this program is available to them. If you’re stationed outside the US, or have a friend or family member who is, sign up to get books.

*If you’re aware of programs like this for the troops of other countries, please leave a comment, and we’ll add the information.
**I talked to the good folks at Operation Paperback, who said that since 95% of troops are male, so there’s no need to send chick-lit or romance novels. Apparently, they end up with plenty anyway. There’s more information about this on their FAQ.

Thanks to Jayel Aheram for the photo.

Labels: event

24-hour Readathon wrap-up

We may not have a logo yet, but the first LibraryThing Readathon was a success. A lot of the fun is reading the thread on Book Talk where participants described their hour of reading. It was interesting to find out where other people chose to read for their designated hour, and absolutely wonderful to hear about the books everyone’s reading right now. You can read the whole thread here, which includes touchstones to the books read. Participants could also tag the book(s) they read. People also started including an excerpt from what they had read, which added a sense of nowness.

It was really fun helping in the creation of a new kind of event, which felt very community-oriented yet very easy to participate in. I myself woke up, grabbed my book, and started reading in bed. Sure, there wasn’t any brie provided (unlike the Boston meetup), but it also didn’t require getting out of bed.

We called it a beta test, because we weren’t sure what would need changing during the event, or for future events. We’ll talk about what to change, so know we’re planning on another event sometime in the spring. If you’d like to join in the organizing conversation, jump in.

Labels: event, LibraryThing event, ltreadathonbeta, readathon, reading

Crosspost: LibraryThing party in Boston

Crossposted from the LibraryThing blog:

LibraryThing party in Boston:
Gather with librarians and LibraryThing members alike to eat, drink and talk books.

Date: January 16th, 2010
Time: 5:30-8:00 pm
Location: The Green Dragon (see Local event) – 11 Marshall St Boston, MA 02108
Updates: Follow @conferencething on Twitter

We’ll be at the ALA midwinter conference exhibit hall at booth 1208, so stop by to say hi and grab a flier with info and directions.

Labels: ALAmw2010, boston, event, meet up

LibraryThing party in Boston

If you’ll be in Boston this Saturday, January 16th , come to our LibraryThing Meetup!

We’re taking advantage of the American Library Assocation conference in Boston to pull together all our favorite bibliophiles, eat food, drink drinks, and talk about the state of books, the future of the book, and what you just finished reading.

In true LibraryThing tradition we’ll be providing ALL THE BAKED BRIE YOU CAN HANDLE, along with other light fare, perhaps including some that don’t revolve around cheese. Since we’re not doing ConferenceThing,* we’ve got some money to burn, and can offer a snack-y dinner instead. You buy the beer.

Date: January 16th, 2010
Time: 5:30-8:00 pm
Location: The Green Dragon (see Local event) – 11 Marshall St Boston, MA 02108
Updates: Follow @conferencething or @librarythingtim on Twitter

Directly after our event there’s a tweetup for ALA conference-goers at the same location. We like to keep our 2.0 events convenient!

*Our original plan was to have ConferenceThing, a mini-conference giving librarians and bibliophiles a chance to talk about books in all their forms, and the book world. That didn’t work out, as we couldn’t find speakers and in a choice between hearing Tim speak in front of a projector and watching Tim and Abby shovel brie…

Labels: ALA, conference, Conferencething, event, LibraryThing event, Midwinter

A new holiday for December: Do Nothing but Read Day

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:

Optional:

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).

Labels: DNBRD, DNBRD2009, Do Nothing but Read Day, event, reading