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This study aims to determine the most similar set of recommendation books to the user selections in LibraryThing.

For this purpose, 30,000 tags related to History on the LibraryThing have been selected. Their tags and the tags of the related recommended books were extracted from three different recommendations sections on LibraryThing. Then, four similarity criteria of Jaccard coefficient, Cosine similarity, Dice coefficient and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to calculate the similarity between the tags. To determine the most similar recommended section, the best similarity criterion had to be determined first. So, a researcher-made questionnaire was provided to History experts.

The results showed that the Jaccard coefficient, with a frequency of 32.81, is the best similarity criterion from the point of view of History experts. Besides, the degree of similarity in LibraryThing recommendations section according to this criterion is equal to 0.256, in the section of books with similar library subjects and classifications is 0.163 and in the Member recommendations section is 0.152. Based on the findings of this study, the LibraryThing recommendations section has succeeded in introducing the most similar books to the selected book compared to the other two sections.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, itis for the first time, three sections of LibraryThing recommendations are compared by four different similarity criteria to show which sections would be more beneficial for the user browsing. The results showed that machine recommendations work better than humans.

LibraryThing is a Web 2.0 tool allowing users to catalogue books using data drawn from sources such as Amazon and the Library of Congress and has facilities such as tagging and interest groups. This study seeks to evaluate whether LibraryThing is a valuable tool for libraries to use for promotional and user engagement purposes.

This study used a sequential mixed methods three-phase design: the identification of LibraryThing features for user engagement or promotional purposes, exploratory semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire.

Several uses of LibraryThing for promotional and user engagement purposes were identified. The most popular reason libraries used LibraryThing was to promote the library or library stock, with most respondents using it specifically to highlight collections of books. Monitoring of patron usage was low and many respondents had not received any feedback. LibraryThing was commonly reported as being easy to use, remotely accessible, and having low cost, whilst its main drawbacks were the 200 book limit for free accounts, and it being a third-party site. The majority of respondents felt LibraryThing was a useful tool for libraries.

LibraryThing has most value as a promotional tool for libraries. Libraries should actively monitor patron usage of their LibraryThing account or request user feedback to ensure that LibraryThing provides a truly valuable service for their library.

There is little research on the value of LibraryThing for libraries, or librarians' perceptions of LibraryThing as a Web 2.0 tool.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight limits to the dominant model of social inclusion under which UK public libraries operate, to analyse how and to what extent processes of socio‐cultural exclusion emerge in the subject representation and discoverability of “non‐dominant” resources in public library OPACs, and to consider folksonomy as a solution to any issues raised.

The paper first develops a critique of the dominant model of “inclusion” within UK public libraries, drawing on feminist and critical theories of identity. It then considers how this critique overlaps with and offers fresh insights into major debates within subject indexing, and develops a theoretical rationale for considering the potential of folksonomy to intervene in more inclusive subject‐indexing design. A user‐based critical interpretive methodology which understands OPACs as texts open to multiple interpretations is developed, and a comparative reading of standard OPACs and LibraryThing folksonomy is undertaken to evaluate the discoverability and subject representation of LGBTQ and ethnic minority resources.

LibraryThing folksonomy offers benefits over LCSH subject indexing in the discoverability and representation of LGBTQ resources. However, the folksonomy is dominated by US taggers, and this impacts on the tagging of ethnic minority resources. Folksonomy, like traditional indexing, is found to contain its own biases in worldview and subject representation.

The importance of subject indexing in developing inclusive library services is highlighted and a new method for evaluating OPACs is developed.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the recent developments in interface design and company development of social networking sites.

This paper focuses on Shelfari, Goodreads, Visual Bookshelf and LibraryThing, explaining what librarians need to know about each site. Findings –Each tool featured in this paper may find its niche among users it is more likely that only one or two will emerge as the standard for social cataloging sites.

For those who are brand new to social catologing tools, this paper will serve as a useful introduction.

In the era of social media, users all over the world annotate books with social tags to express their preferences and interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore different tagging behaviours by analysing the book tags in different languages.

This investigation collected nearly 56,000 tags of 1,200 books from one Chinese and two English online bookmarking systems; it combined content analysis and machine-processing methods to evaluate the similarities and differences between different tagging systems from a cross-lingual perspective. Jaccard’s coefficient was adopted to evaluate the similarity level.

The results show that the similarity between mono-lingual tags of the same books is higher than that of cross-lingual tags in different systems and the similarity between tags of books written for specialties is higher than that of books written for the general public.

Those who have more in common annotate books with more similar tags. The similarity between users in tagging systems determines the similarity of the tag sets.

The results and conclusion of this study will benefit users’ cross-lingual information retrieval and cross-lingual book recommendation for online bookmarking systems.

This study may be one of the first to compare cross-lingual tags. Its methodology can be applied to tag comparison between any two languages. The insights of this study will help develop cross-lingual tagging systems and improve information retrieval.

The purpose of this paper is to share the experience of implementing LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL) at the Claremont University Consortium's libraries, the first US academic library to try LTFL.

The objectives are to share CUC's experience with LTFL, sharing a list of pros and cons about the tool, implementation of the tool, experiences with the tool, and future steps planned by LTFL.

Claremont University Consortium finds the tool to be a helpful overlay of user‐generated tags and suggested readings based on tags over the current bibliographic information provided in the traditional library catalog. Implementation of LTFL is easy, LTFL provides significant and immediate support, and is useful for finding items for research as well as for browsing.

The paper is valuable for libraries considering LTFL as a catalog overlay, as well as for libraries interested in learning about next generation cataloging concepts.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the percentage of recently published books provided with tags drawn from LibraryThing for Libraries, the nature of these tags, the relation of the tags with keywords in the record and the percentage of records actually enhanced by tags.

A random sample of 600 records from a catalog of a large academic library was examined to determine whether or not they carry tags. A random sample of 160 records was taken to assess their nature and added value for retrieval purposes.

It was found that: about one third of the records are provided with tags; 80 percent of the tags are subject terms; 50 percent of the subject tags are covered by a keyword in the record; 25 percent are broader than a keyword and another 25 percent are related, narrower or new. Almost 40 percent of the records with tags can be considered as enriched.

In some cases the determination of the added value required a subjective judgement. It was not examined whether the tags properly reflect the content of the book.

Unlike earlier studies, this study is based on a large and random sample. Tags are compared not only with subject headings, but also with other keywords and differences between disciplines are examined.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative analysis of the “messiness” of the social tags in folksonomies to see how useful they might be for general search and retrieval in library catalogs.

The study harvested tags for ten books from LibraryThing measuring characteristics which would hinder search and retrieval in library catalogs.

Because there are no rules governing the way people tag, folksonomies suffer from a certain degree of messiness and inconsistency. More than a third of this messiness is in the form of tag variations followed by tags containing non‐alphabetic characters. The other types of messiness measured were less significant, making tag variations the most prominent hindrance to search and retrieval.

The paper supplies quantitative support for giving users guidance for creating tags in a library catalog. However, libraries should remember that part of the attraction of social tagging is its open and self‐created environment and that too many rules and regulations may discourage participation.