The CW Library in LibraryThing

LibraryThing Window

To browse our LibraryThing library, go to: www.librarything.com/catalog/CWLibrary. You will see

Ours is a "public" library (meaning, anyone can view the contents of our library; borrowing is still restricted to CW members), so you do not need a password to view the collection. If you, as a visitor to our library, log onto: www.librarything.com/catalog/CWLibrary you are using our "preferred display style." In this display style, you'll get the following columns: title, author, publication (publisher), tags, comments, review, and shared. This brings into one view all the critical data columns you need for finding materials in our library. You may elect not to use this display style by clicking on "stop using it." When you stop using our preferred display style, you have access to all the other LT display styles. Just above the listings, you'll find five different "display styles" (shown then as views A through E). Different views provide you with different columns of information; you may need to cycle through several views to gather all the information you want about a particular book. While there is an Edit button for the Display Styles, you cannot edit them without signing in with a password.

Some of the columns in each Display Style are self- explanatory: Author and Title are, of course, the author and title of the work. The Date column is the date of publication of the work, and the Publication column gives the publisher of the work. Display Style D shows the covers of works in the left-most column, or you can click on Cover View in the tool bar to see all covers. However, CW holdings are, for the most part, so obscure that there are few covers displayed. LibraryThing allows users to upload scans or photos of book covers, and when the more important work of entering authors, titles, and other information about our holdings is complete, the CW Librarian perhaps will have time to scan in some covers. It is rather nice to have little thumbnail views of books as you browse through the library.

Two other columns are important for your ability to navigate around the database and to get the information you need about particular books or topics: Comments and Tags. The Tags column is displayed in all Styles except C. The Comments column appears only in Style D.The Comments column, among other things, tells you if the publication is available online at either Ralph Griswold's or Kris Bruland's websites. Many of our holdings are available online and can be downloaded free of charge. In the case of study group materials, the Comments column indicates how many notebooks we have for a given group, and in the case of periodicals, the Comments column tells you which issues of the periodical the CW library holds. Tags are keywords assigned to each work that help you search by topic. (See below for more about Tags.)

You will notice that one of the columns in your view has a small blue triangle next to its header.This tells you that your view is currently alphabetized by that column. If there is a blue triangle next to the word "Author", you are seeing the works alphabetized by author. If you would rather see the works alphabetized by Title, simply click on the word "Title."

Searching the Library

Search Features

The use of tags (keywords) is perhaps the most important feature in the LibraryThing database. There are two ways in which you can use tags: by using the Search field or by clicking on a tag. Let's talk about the Search field first. The Search field appears just above and to the right of the column heads (see the figure). You will see three fields: in one, there is the gray text "Search this library," the second is a changeable field with a down arrow, and the third is the Search button. Before you do a search, you must decide which columns you want to search. The choices (found by clicking on the down arrow in the middle of these three fields) are Books, Tags, or All Fields. If you choose books, you will be searching both the Title and Author fields. You do not need the whole title of a book. A single word that you know is in the title is sufficient to bring up the book (and all other books that have the same word in the title).

Working with Tags

One of the most powerful tools in LibraryThing is to search by tags. The tags include words that are not in the title of the book, but that will bring up the book when you have specified that you wish to search by tag and you type in the word. For example, most of the books on what I call "narrow ware"-tablet weaving, braiding, inkle weaving, etc.-have the tag "bands." This word may not appear in the title of any of the books, but it's a word many people may use to search for books on these types of narrowweaving techniques. If you have specified a search by Tags and you type the word "bands" (without quote marks) into the Search This Library field, you'll get a list of all books that carry "bands" as a tag/keyword. A word of caution: searching tags will not bring up books unless the tag is an exact match. In other words, if you search on "table loom" and the actual keyword is "table looms", you will not get a match. Though we are making every effort to put both singular and plurals in for keywords, we are bound to slip up. If you get no matches in your search, try a different form of the word or phrase. The use of the wildcard character, * may help here. For example, use "table loom*"

A second way to search on tags is simply to click on any tag in any publication listing. This will bring up a list of all publications that have that tag. For example, if you find a book with a tag that says Africa, you can click on that word. This will generate a list of all works in our library for which we have included the tag Africa. This is a great way to search for similar materials.

Searches with Multiple Goals

You can search on more than one tag at a time, and you can search All Fields. Probably the most important capability for us is the ability to search on more than one tag at a time. Let's assume you wanted to find all the publications in the Canada Branch Library pertaining to card weaving. You must use the All Fields search, and here's the syntax: tag: can, tag: card weaving You must have the punctuation exactly as it is above: the word tag, followed by a colon, followed by the first tag you want to search on, followed by a comma, followed by the word tag, followed by a colon, followed by the second word you want to search on. Here's another example: search for all publications in the US library that deal with coverlets. Use the All Fields search and type in: tag: us, tag: coverlets

Other Searches

While we're at it, here's another way to use the All Fields search. Let's say you'd like to find all the materials that are in our library that are also available online, either on Ralph Griswold's website ( www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/weavedocs.html) or on Kris Bruland's (www.handweaving.net). The information about whether a particular item is available online is contained in the Comments column. Again, set your search to All Fields. Then type in as follows: Comments: available online This will generate a list of all the materials that either of the two CW libraries holds that are also available on one of the websites.

Special Tags

US/CAN

There are a few tags that are specialized for our library. One is "us"; this means the book (or other material) is in the CW US library. Another term is "can"; this, of course, means that the book is in the new CW Canada Branch Library (CBL). Using the technique outlined in the previous paragraph, therefore, if you click on the word "can" in the tag field of any publication, you will get a list of all the materials in the CBL.

CW Classifications

There are also tags for the seven classifications into which our library listing is currently sorted: books, study groups, periodicals, portfolios, exhibit catalogs, videos, and CDs. This will help us create a printed catalog that more or less reflects the way we currently organize our printed catalog for those who cannot or do not wish to use the online version. It also allows you, for example, to display a list of all study group materials or all periodicals. In other words, if you click on the words "study group" in the tags column for any entry, LibraryThing will generate a list for you of all entries that are materials from CW study groups

LibraryThing Printouts

You can also create your own printout in LibraryThing. Whatever view you are in (A through E) or the CW Library's own view, click on the little printer symbol just to the right of the List View / Cover View choice. This generates a printable catalog based on your current view. From there, you can print the document as you would any other document on the web (click on File->Print). If you have done a search and have a list resulting from that search, when you click on the Print icon, you will be printing only the results of that search. Thus, you could have a printout of all study group materials, all materials on tablet or card weaving, all materials on double weave, or whatever your search criterion was. Since CW library holdings are entered into the LibraryThing database upon receipt, any printout from it will be more up to date than the printed catalog that is mailed out every two years or so.

Reviews

In our current printed catalog, if a book or article has been reviewed, the newsletter or Journal number is provided, along with the date. This capability is not lost in LibraryThing. The Journal/Newsletter number and date are listed unter the "Review" Column. You may also click on what looks like a Rolodex card to the right of the listing. You will see all kinds of information about that publication-much more than can be included in the columns of the LibraryThing database. Under the heading User Data, you will find the review information if the book has previously been reviewed in one of the CW publications.

Social Data

Finally, what is that funny little person-icon, also in the Shared column? This is what LibraryThing calls "Social Data," and it tells you if others whose libraries are in LibraryThing have the same book. If there is just one person-icon, then CW is the only library that has the work. If others have the work as well, the person-icon is doubled, with the number under the icon indicating how many others have the work. One of the entries in the figure above indicates that others have the same book. Click on the person-icon, scroll down a bit on the next page, and you'll see a list of who else owns the book. If you click on that person's name (these are usually "screen names"), you will be taken to a user profile page, from which you can access his/her library. Another hint about Social Data: if the person-icon has a yellow-colored balloon indicating the icon is "talking" (as in a comic strip), this means that there is a review of the book other than our own review. If the talk-balloon is green, this means it is our review. Thus, you can access reviews either in the "edit info" screen (our reviews only) or in the Social Data screen (our reviews plus any others of the same publication).

LibraryThing Beta

You will notice, as you are browsing through LibraryThing, that it calls itself "LibraryThing Beta." The owner/developer of LibraryThing, Tim Spalding, a web developer and web publisher based in Portland, Maine, views the current version of LibraryThing as still in the testing phase. He is constantly creating new ways to input or search the many libraries in LibraryThing, and, to a lesser extent, he is also occasionally changing the on-screen look of LibraryThing. Don't be surprised if the look of LibraryThing is changed from what appears in the screen capture shown above.

So now it is time for you to play around in LibraryThing. It is great fun, and you will probably find a lot more tricks that this online catalog can do. You may even succumb to the siren song of LibraryThing and decide to put your personal library into its database. More than a few weavers already have.

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Update: February 26, 2008