Thing 11: Award-winning Apps.

Looking around the list of 2007 winners, I was astounded by the quality and ingenuity of the sites. I chose LibraryThing because I'd read on the MSLA listserv that it is a great cataloguing tool. I was hooked by the brusque tone of the LT home page in which, after describing the merits of LT and how it works, it concludes, "If the buzz page doesn't convince you, you cannot be convinced. Go away." I suspect that is the voice of founder and director Tim Spalding, a fellow Massachusettser. The buzz page is unbelievably voluminous and enthusiastic. As a thing "of the people," its connections (the social networking piece), the collective wisdom (eg., people taking the time to identify duplicate works and authors, or contribute photos), the dynamic nature of a thing evolving, is a tribute to humanity and the hard work of the LT folks. Why keep library cataloguing in the hands of librarians? For an example of this, see the thread on adding books. The idea discussed is the integrity of records when you have the same book with many records (some good, some b0tched) and how to control for them. It's an example of a user's idea being explored by other users who contribute refinements to the solution. It's not clear that LT has or will adopt the improvements, but they are clearly aware that duplicate records is a problem.