State of The Thing

LibraryThing: State of the Thing Dear {NAME}, Welcome to the December 2016 State of the Thing! Read on for our top five books of 2016, LibraryThing swag, site improvements, and other updates. If you'd rather receive a plain-text version, [edit your email preferences]. You can also [read it online]. Our State of the Thing archive lives [here]. You can like LibraryThing on [Facebook] and follow [@LibraryThing] on Twitter and [LibraryThing] on Tumblr for up-to-the-minute site news and updates. Top Five Books of 2016 As the year draws to a close, LT staff returns to one of my favorite traditions: our Top Five list! Each staffer reflects back upon their year in reading, and picks their five favorites. Check them out on [the blog]. We'd also love to hear about your top reads from this past year! Come tell us about your favorites on [Talk], and [add yours] to the master list. Note: books on this list weren't necessarily published in 2016—we're more interested in the best of the best, regardless of publication date. LibraryThing Holiday Store Love LibraryThing? Show off your great taste with LT t-shirts, tote bags, stamps, stickers, and more. Everything in the [LT Holiday Store] is discounted now through January 6th. Treat yourself! We don't yet have TinyCat swag available, but Kristi is working on it! Expect updates in the next month or so. Holiday Happenings [SantaThing] As some of you might know, SantaThing is wrapping up and in its final stages. We had a grand total of 484 Secret Santas joining us this year! If you missed out this time around, we hope to see you next November. Gift deliveries have already begun to arrive, and, as is tradition, we're mapping Santa's stops around the world over with our [SantaThing Arrivals Map]. If you've received your gifts, be sure to let us know on [Talk]. If they haven't arrived just yet, don't worry! Either way, you'll be able to peek at who your Secret Santa was and what books they picked for you on December 25th, so look out for a message from us then. [Card Exchange] For the third year running, we've been pleased to host the LibraryThing Holiday Card Exchange. Members sign up, and indicate how many other LTers they're willing to send holiday cards to—anywhere from 1-10 cards. LTHQ usually gets in on the fun, and sends cards out to the participants as well. Among the 104 members participating, we all pledged to send out over 475 cards. That's some serious holiday cheer! If you're still in the process of mailing, or receiving cards, join the conversation on [Talk]. Site Improvements/Updates Better ISBN Searching We've updated our ISBN search process for library sources on the site—this includes Add Books searches, importing books, and adding books via the iOS App. Previously, some searches were only looking for the ISBN-10 (the 10-digit version of the ISBN), rather than including the ISBN-13 (you guessed it, a 13-digit version) for which certain sources actually return results. Now, if your library source search fails to find results for one version of the ISBN, it will automatically move on to try the other version, before returning your final results. Author Recalculation Improvements Late last month, Tim gave our system for calculating and recalculating the primary author of works on LibraryThing a massive overhaul. Read all about it on [Talk]. Hand-in-hand with this update, we've also added the ability to delete primary authors on works on LT. This forces a recalculation of the author, which should also turn up a better result than recalculating would have previously. Details on [Talk]. Talk of the Thing [How Do You Use Tags?] Tags on LibraryThing are a deep and fascinating subject, and, as this Talk thread explores, there are many different schools of thought and methods to the madness. So how do you use tags on LibraryThing? Come join the discussion on[Talk]. [Favorite First Contact Stories.] An old thread that bubbled up again recently, this conversation over in the Science Fiction Fans group is mulling over the best in First Contact narratives, regardless of medium. See what we've come up with, or add yours, [here]. [A Book in Every Country.] One of our own is on a quest to stock their library with a book from every country around the world. They've made great headway, and it's such a neat project! But they're still looking for recommendations. See what they've got so far, and add your suggestions on [Talk]. Free Books: Early Reviewers You are not currently signed up for [LibraryThing's Early Reviewers] program. You are missing out! Early Reviewers offers free books to members—about 100 titles a month! Since 2007, we've given out over 160,000 books. The catch? Publishers want your honest review. How you review a book won't help or hurt your chances of winning books in the future, but not reviewing your winning will. [» Sign up for Early Reviewers] The December batch of [Early Reviewers] books contains 1,710 copies of 73 different titles. The deadline to request a free book is Monday, January 2nd at 6pm, Eastern. Look for the January batch around the 9th. The most requested books so far from the December batch: TinyCat Webinars Check out [TinyCat], the online catalog for "tiny" libraries, at our free, weekly Wednesday [webinars]. Due to the holidays, we won't be hosting a webinar this week, but you can join us for our first one of the new year: Wednesday, January 4th, at 1pm Eastern (US). Head over to [this link] at that time, and look for the TinyCat Webinar. If Wednesday at 1pm doesn't work for you, let us know—we'll be happy to schedule a session for you. We're here to answer your TinyCat questions via email at any time: [tinycat@librarything.com]. Stay tuned to our [Facebook] and [Twitter] pages for more announcements, or see a recorded webinar from July on our [YouTube Channel]. More free books: Member Giveaways At any given time, there are hundreds of books available from our Member Giveaways program. It's like Early Reviewers, but isn't limited to select publishers—any author or member can post books. [Request books, or offer your own]! Hot titles this month - [Harry Potter and the Cursed Child] by Jack Thorne, John Tiffany, and J.K. Rowling - [When Breath Becomes Air] by Paul Kalanithi - [A Man Called Ove] by Fredrik Backman - [My Name is Lucy Barton] by Elizabeth Strout - [Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind] by Yuval Noah Harari - [A Little Life] by Hanya Yanagihara - [The Three-Body Problem] by Cixin Liu - [A Darker Shade of Magic] by Victoria Schwab - [Red Queen] by Victoria Aveyard - [Between the World and Me] by Ta-Nehisi Coates I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and I'll see you in 2017! Questions, comments, ideas? Send them my way. —Loranne (loranne@librarything.com) WHY YOU GOT THIS: At some point you signed up for LibraryThing's monthly "State of the Thing" email. If you'd like to unsubscribe, [edit your profile preferences]. This message was sent to {NAME}. Edit your [email preferences] or [unsubscribe from future emails].