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Maine Job: Member Specialist

We need to find a great new employee, so we’re offering $1,000 worth of books to the person who finds us one.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the Maine or local bookseller of your choice. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible, and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are not eligible to win.

Maine Job: Member Specialist

LibraryThing is hiring a full-time member specialist. Although LibraryThing is mostly remote, this job is only available to people who can come into our Portland, Maine HQ at least some of the time.

Requirements

Extra Credit

The Job

The core of the job is set: Talking to LibraryThing, TinyCat and Litsy members by email and on the LibraryThing site, troubleshooting bugs that they find and working with LibraryThing staff to get them fixed.

You need to be able to come into the LibraryThing office, but how often is negotiable. You will need to fulfill orders from the LibraryThing Store, from product in the office.

As a small company, we aim to hire great employees and have no “siloes.” If you have specific skills or experience, we’ll use them. And other duties calling on communication, organization, adaptability, diligence, intelligence, and creativity will pop up, and you must play an engaged and constructive role in company meetings on any topic.

Compensation

Because we’re willing to consider a wide variety of applicants, we can’t set a salary. We anticipate applicants will be looking for $40–65k.

LibraryThing has gold-plated health insurance. We require hard work and are only looking for full-time applicants, but are unusually flexible about hours.

How to Apply

Send a resume in PDF format to tim@librarything.com. Your email should be your cover letter. It should show your ability to be persuasive but succinct.

Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Remember that part about diligence? Your subject line should be “Cheddar Cheese: [Your name]” so we know you are diligent.

Labels: employment, jobs, maine

Job: Systems for LibraryThing (full/part-time, remote)

Update: LibraryThing has filled this position. Thanks to everyone who shared and/or applied!

LibraryThing is looking for a systems administrator / reliability engineer.

Job: Systems for LibraryThing (full/part-time, remote)

$1,000 in Books! As with our Developer Job, we’re offering $1,000 in books to anyone who finds us a person—or finds themselves.

Specifics

About Us: LibraryThing is a small team of developers and librarians. We need a systems administrator/reliability engineer to power our products, including LibraryThing.com, Syndetics Unbound, and Talpa.ai.

Qualifications: We’re looking for someone with broad systems administration experience, who can quickly pick up unfamiliar technologies, diagnose problems, and keep everything running smoothly. You need to be calm under pressure, cautious, and an excellent communicator.

Experience: Applicants need considerable experience running websites on Linux hosts. Experience with MySQL is also important. You will need to be able to demonstrate experience with remote server administration including lights-out management techniques and equipment.

Technologies: We use the following technologies:

Work Anywhere. LibraryThing is “headquartered” in Portland, Maine, but the servers are in Massachusetts and most employees are in neither. We would need daily overlap between your location and Eastern US time.

Hours: We are open to both full-time and part-time applicants, as well as contract workers, depending on skills and experience. A full-time employee may wish to contribute to our product as a developer. See our recent Developer Job for more information on our development.

Compensations: We will consider both contract and salaried positions. If salary, we offer great health insurance.

How to Apply: Email sysadminjob@librarything.com. Send an email with your resume. In your email, review the blog post above, and indicate how you match up with the job. Be specific.(1) Please do not send a separate cover letter.

The Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state or local law.

Did you read this far? This job is going to be posted in a lot of places, and that means we’ll get a lot of people “rolling the dice.” If you don’t seem like you’re applying for this job, we’ll ignore your email. If you want us to know you read the job post–and are therefore a detail-oriented person–please title your email Systems Job: [Your name] (Mango). Really.

Labels: jobs

LibraryThing Needs a Great Developer (Work from Home)

Update: LibraryThing has filled this position. Thanks to everyone who shared and/or applied!

LibraryThing is looking for a great remote developer to work on our library projects.

LibraryThing DeveloperWin $1,000 in Books!

If you find us one—or you find yourself—you get $1,000 in books from the independent bookstore of your choice! (See details at bottom.)

The Job

This job is focused on what LibraryThing does for libraries. This includes Syndetics Unbound, co-developed with ProQuest, TinyCat, and our new AI-based library product Talpa.ai. You will probably also be involved in projects for LibraryThing.com.

Depending on interest and experience, your job may involve working with Large Language Models, machine learning, systems administration/operation, or mobile programming. You will at least be trained in the basics of LLMs.

We Use

Good to Have

Non-Technical

Location and Compensation ($65–130k)

This is a remote job open to anyone eligible to work in the US. We’d love to employ people outside the US, but the legal hassles are generally too much for us as a small company.

We are looking to work with the right person, not filling a spot with a clearly-delineated set of responsibilities and a predetermined salary. We will consider everything from junior to senior candidates. The salary range reflects that.

LibraryThing offers excellent health and dental insurance. Employees pay no premiums. We require hard work but are unusually flexible about hours and family commitments.

How to Apply

Before you apply, you should make sure you can do the LibraryThing Programming Quiz, which is something like Jeff Atwood’s “Fizz Buzz.” Our interviews include a simple programming quiz not unlike that. If you object to such things, please do not apply.

Send a cover-letter email and PDF resume to info@librarything.com. Your cover letter should go through the key parts of this job advertisement, responding to it, briefly.

The Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state or local law.

Did you read this far? Prove that you did by making your email subject line “Camembert Job: [Your name].” Really.

$1,000 Rules

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the indie bookstore of your choice. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible, and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are not eligible to win.

Labels: jobs

LibraryThing Needs a Great Library Developer

LibraryThing is looking for a great developer to work on our library projects.

Win $1,000 in Books!

If you find us one—or you find yourself—you get $1,000 in books from the independent bookstore of your choice!

The Job

This job is focused on what LibraryThing does for libraries. These include Syndetics Unbound, co-developed with ProQuest, and TinyCat. You will also be involved in parsing library data for LibraryThing.com and other company projects, as needed.

Depending on interest and experience, you may also be involved in machine learning, systems architecture, or mobile programming.

Need to Have

Good to Have

Non-Technical

Location and Compensation ($60–120k)

This is a remote job open to anyone eligible to work in the US. We’d love to employ people outside the US, but the legal hassles are generally too much for us as a small company.

We are looking to work with the right person, not filling a spot with a clearly-delineated set of responsibilities and a predetermined salary. We will consider everything from junior to senior candidates. The salary range reflects that.

LibraryThing offers excellent health and dental insurance. Employees pay no premiums. We require hard work but are unusually flexible about hours and family commitments.

How to Apply

Before you apply, you should make sure you can do the LibraryThing Programming Quiz, which is something like Jeff Atwood’s “Fizz Buzz.” Our interviews include a simple programming quiz not unlike that. If you object to such things, please do not apply.

Send a cover-letter email and PDF resume to info@librarything.com. Your cover letter should go through this job advertisement, responding to it, briefly.

The Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state or local law. Did you read this far? Prove that you did by making your email subject line “Gouda Cheese: [Your name].”

“Help LibraryThing…” image uses a CC BY 2.0 photo by Jorge Láscar (source).

Labels: employment, jobs

shelfshot

Update:

This position has been filled. See our blog post on our newest employee for more details.

We need to find a great new employee, so we’re offering $1,000 worth of books to the person who finds us one. What would you buy? Everything.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the local, chain or online bookseller of your choice. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible, and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are not eligible to win.

Job Ad: Project Specialist for LibraryThing

LibraryThing is hiring a project specialist (full-time, remote position). Although we’d love someone in Maine, the job is open to librarians and other book lovers throughout the United States.

You Must

We Want

We will pick smarts, affability, and drive over any skill. And we’ll tailor the job to fit your skills and experience.

An ideal candidates might have some or all of these:

Your duties will probably include:

As a small company, we have few “siloes.” So other duties calling on organization, adaptability, diligence, intelligence, and creativity will pop up, and you must play an engaged and constructive role in company meetings on any topic.

Your job may include occasional travel—once that’s possible again—to meet your coworkers and perhaps to publisher or library conferences.

Compensation

Because we’re willing to consider a wide variety of applicants, we can’t set a salary. But our health insurance is gold-plated. We require hard work and are only looking for full-time applicants, but we are unusually flexible about hours.

How to Apply

Send your resume in PDF format to tim@librarything.com. Your email should be your cover letter. It should show your ability to be persuasive but succinct.

If we interview you, we will ask you to write and edit something “live.” We do this together a lot, so if that makes you uncomfortable, this might not be the job for you.

Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Remember that part about diligence? Your subject line should be “Brie Cheese: [Your name]” so we know you are diligent.

Bookshelves image courtesy Germán Poo-Caamaño (see Flickr), CC BY 2.0.

Labels: employment, jobs

We just posted a new job post Job: Library Developer at LibraryThing (Telecommute).

To sweeten the deal, we are offering $1,000 worth of books to the person who finds them. That’s a lot of books.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the local, chain or online bookseller of your choice.

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired full-time, not part-time, contract or for a trial period. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. The contact must happen in the next month. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are eligible to win, provided they aren’t work contacts. Tim is not.

» Job: Library Developer at LibraryThing (Telecommute)

Labels: jobs

Job: Library Developer at LibraryThing (Telecommute)

Code! Code! Code!

LibraryThing, the company behind LibraryThing.com and LibraryThing for Libraries, is looking to hire a top-notch developer/programmer.

We like to think we make “products that don’t suck,” as opposed to much of what’s developed for libraries. We’ve got new ideas and not enough developers to make them. That’s where you come in.

The Best Person

Technical Skills

shutterstock_59784454

The highly-photogenic LibraryThing staff only use stock photos ironically.

What We Value

Compensation

How To Apply

Labels: jobs

Job: Junior Social Media Specialist in Portland, ME

LibraryThing is hiring a full-time Junior Social Media Specialist. We’re looking for someone who is bookish, local (Portland, ME area), and social media-savvy. You’d be working closely with Loranne, our Member Support and Social Media Librarian, here at LTHQ in Portland.

You must:

We’ll pick smarts, affability and drive over any skill. But our ideal candidate would have:

Your duties include:

Compensation:

Experience-appropriate salary with gold-plated health and dental insurance. We require hard work, but we are flexible about hours, and–so long as you are in the area–where you work from.

How to apply:

Send your resume (in PDF format, please) to loranne@librarything.com. Your email should be your cover letter.

Fine Print:

Per our Privacy Policy, LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national origin, ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Labels: employment, hiring, jobs

LibraryThing is growing. We’ve long devoted a sizable hunk of our resources to our products for traditional libraries (LibraryThing for Libraries). That business is growing fast, as more and more libraries are discovering the value of our tools.

So it’s time to reap the benefits, and fund LibraryThing.com development.

And we need your help to get the word out.

We need to find a kick-ass PHP programmer, so we’re offering 1,000worthofbookstothepersonwhofindsthem.Thinkofit.1,000 worth of books to the person who finds them. Think of it. 1,000worthofbookstothepersonwhofindsthem.Thinkofit.1,000 in books. What would you buy? Everything.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the local, chain or online bookseller of your choice.

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired full-time, not part-time, contract or for a trial period. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. The contact must happen in the next month. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are eligible to win, provided they aren’t work contacts. Tim is not.

Here’s the job post:

What we want: LibraryThing is looking for a kick-ass programmer (coder, hacker, engineer, etc.) to join the team, working mostly on LibraryThing.com.

Basics:

Tangibles:

Take the Quiz:

Want to work for us? We have a simple quiz, developed back in 2011. If you can do it in under five minutes, you should apply for the job!

» The LibraryThing Programming Test

Do it in your best language the first time. If you also want to do it in PHP, we won’t object.

Intangibles:

Compensation:

Salary plus gold-plated health and dental insurance. We find the best programmers keep regular hours, but we are both understanding and flexible.

Other:

How to Apply:

Send an email and resume to jobs@librarything.com.

Skip the cover letter, and go through the blog post in your email, responding to the tangibles and intangibles bullet-by-bullet.

Also include your solution to the quiz, and how long it took you. Anything under five minutes is fine. If it takes you longer than five minutes, we won’t know. But if you make it to interviews, they’ll involve some live coding of this sort, and will be painful for you.

Labels: jobs

700 Thank-Yous

After congratulating Loranne and Matt, I want to thank everyone who applied for the job and didn’t get it.

You are superstars

Almost 700 people ended up applying. Many put a lot of work into their cover letters, and I asked almost 100 to complete detailed follow-up questions. I interviewed 10–at two hours each, on average. People gave us a lot of time, and I’m grateful for it.

The applicant pool was amazing, including booksellers, librarians, publishing people and book lovers of innumerable types and talents. We seriously considered everyone from a director of marketing at a red-hot imprint to first-job people who just loved books so much they had to apply. Many were long-time LibraryThing members, many “outsiders.” Each “cut” was difficult. I suspect that most could have done the job, and I suspect hundreds would have rocked it. Deciding on Loranne and Matt was exciting. But saying goodbye to so many great people feels like a loss.

So, thank you for your time, and good luck in your careers. You guys are the superstars of the book world.

And all I got was this lousy t-shirt?

If you applied for the job, and if you’ve read all the way down to this, you may be saying “I applied for this job, and all I got is nice words?” But if you applied, you also know the original job post hid something at the bottom.(1)

Well, not true. You also get a t-shirt. Well, at least the first 100 people to ask will get one. (We might go above 100, but supplies here may give out.) Just email Tim your address, color and size, and we’ll hook you up.

Labels: employees, employment, jobs

Goodbye Jeremy

Jeremy wins one.

Tim and Jeremy lose one.

Yesterday LibraryThing turned eight, and today we say goodbye to Jeremy Dibbell (jbd1), LibraryThing’s social-media guy and all-around LibraryThing soul.

After nearly three years at LibraryThing, Jeremy is moving on. Next week he begins work as Director of Communications and Outreach at Rare Book School, located at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. We’ve loaned him to Rare Book School each summer he’s worked for us. He’s looking forward to joining the team there full time.

Jeremy is a long-time and much-loved member of the team. He was an early adopter, and became LibraryThing’s official-unofficial head of the Legacy Library project long before he came to work for us formally. Most members probably know him from the newsletter, our Facebook and Twitter feeds, from member-help emails, and for his Talk posts, helping new members and laying out his vision for LibraryThing’s development.

We aren’t going to lose him completely. Jeremy will continue on for a few weeks helping us where he can and giving his successor(1) some tips. And he will continue as head of the Legacy Library project. Indeed, as he says, he’ll have more time for it now. I suspect he’ll make his views about the site known too. I doubt he could help it.

It’s not easy to summarize everything Jeremy has done for us. Some highlights include:

Jeremy moved to Portland to take this job, living only a block away from my house and the office. (My wife and my son were particularly grieved to hear he was leaving.) Being in the office gave his advocacy for members and his vision for LibraryThing extra impact. He’s been at the center of every major decision–from features to hires–for some time now. He’d be harder to miss if his contribution was not more obvious in the culture he leaves behind.

Sad as we are, we’re also excited for him too. He’s been passionate about Rare Book School for years–continuing to help out there in the summer was a condition of his taking the job. Charlottesville is a beautiful place. It is also close by Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson built his library. When he left Jeremy gave my son Liam a children’s book about Monticello and Jefferson’s love of books. It is fitting that Jeremy is there now, with his Jefferson-sized library and bibliophilia.

So, from me and all the LibraryThing staff, thank you Jeremy.

1. In case you’re wondering, our social-media job is still open, but closing fast. See the job post.

Labels: employees, employment, jefferson, jeremy dibbell, jobs, legacy libraries

LibraryThing is Hiring: Bookish and Social-Media Savvy?

This could be you! (clockwise: ChrisC, Kate, Abby, Tim, Mike, ChrisH; unpictured Seth, KJ, Jeremy.)

This could be you too, and wouldn’t that be great?
(photo by member Bluesky1963)

LibraryThing is hiring(1) a full-time, bookish, social-media savvy employee. We want someone who lives and breathes books, and would jump at the chance to talk to book lovers, authors, publishers and librarians.(2)

This is an anywhere position, but we will favor Portland, Maine people. If you live elsewhere, you’ll be expected to spend time in Portland at the start of the job, and return on a regular basis.

You must:

We’d like:

Duties:

Compensation: Salary plus gold-plated health and dental insurance. We require hard work, but we are flexible about hours.

How to apply: Resume [as a PDF file] is good. Don’t send one of those overboiled cover letters, sent as another damn Microsoft Word document titled “Cover Letter,” but a brief introduction would be good, recapitulating the bullets above and how they do or don’t fit you. Send emails to tim@librarything.com.(3)

1. Jeremy (member JBD1) is moving on and up; he’ll be the new Director of Communications and Outreach at Rare Book School in Charlottesville, VA. It’s a great move for Jeremy–he’s been going down there to help them run the summer sessions for four years now. He’ll continue as unofficial-but-unquestioned leader of the Legacy Libraries project. We’ll bid him a proper good-bye in a later blog post.
2. In another company this might be called a “social media manager” job, but we don’t “manage” our members, we talk to them. We don’t want fake, we want nice but genuine.
3. Please title the email “LTSOCMED [your name].” Also, follow directions–even the ones at the end of a blog post.

Labels: employees, employment, hiring, jeremy dibbell, jobs