History of LibraryThing

From WikiThing

This is a history, or timeline if you will, of significant developments in the LibraryThing system, family of products, and staff. And anything else important LT-wise. See also:

• LTFL Timeline
• Collections (development history)

[edit] 2005

• Aug. 29 2005 - LibraryThing, begun by Tim Spalding, went live[1]
• Aug. 31 2005 - CSV export added[2]
• Sept. 2005 - Original announcements about LibraryThing were posted[3]
• Sept. 4, 2005 - Tag clouds and Shared books added circa Sept. 4[4]
• Sept. 24, 2005 - "4,078 members since August 29, 2005"
• Nov. 3, 2005 - Talk feature first proposed[5]
• Nov. 20, 2005 - Collections feature first proposed[6]
• Dec. 2005 - Abby Blachly (ablachly) joined the staff part-time; she joined full time when LibraryThing was funded in May 06

[edit] 2006

• January 2006 - Christopher Holland (conceptDawg) hired as contract developer
• May 16, 2006. LibraryThing funded by AbeBooks.
• May 2006 - "Books cataloged 2,696,553; Total users 38,049"
• June 2006 - "51,000 members and 3.5million books."[7]
• July 2006 - Talk feature debuted; officially launched Aug. 9, 2006[8]
  • oldest thread: may be from July 20, 2006: [9]
• October 2006 - "number of users were around 90,000"

[edit] 2007

• Jan. 24, 2007 - LibraryThing hires John McGrath of "Wordie" and "Squirl" (2007-07) [10]
• April 2007 - Altay Guvench (JavaScript wizard) joins LT.[11]
• May 14, 2007 - Librarything for Libraries debuts at Danbury Library in Connecticut.
• August 5, 2007 - Librarything hires Giovanni Soltoggio (gio)[12]
• August 20, 2007 - Librarything hires Casey Durfee (caseydurfee)[13] [14]
• August 29, 2007 - Suggested viewing styles for your library[15]
• Sept. 2007 - By Sept. 2007, Robyn Over (robynover; original code for Groups & Talk; 2006-07), Chris Gann (chrisgann; db admin, 2006-07), and John McGrath have left LT. [16][17]
• Sept. 2007 - Altay Guvench (JavaScript wizard) has left LT.[18]
• September 10, 2007 - WikiThing is released. [19]
• September 14, 2007 - Librarything hires Lindsey Nichols (lindseynichols) [20] (2007-09)
• September 24, 2007 - LibraryThing hires their first full-time sysadamin, John Dalton (aka "felius") (Felius)[21][22]
• Oct. 10, 2007 - Common Knowledge officially released
• Dec. 2007 - Multiple author handling and Private Comments field introduced

[edit] 2008

• Jan. 2008 - First Legacy Library completed -- Thomas Jefferson
• Feb 2008 - CK Series field added
• Feb 2008 - LibraryThing hires Sonya Green (sonyagreen) for LTFL and Chris Holland (conceptDawg) finally comes on board as an actual employee. [23]
• March 3, 2008 - LibraryThing Local [24] goes live
• May 2008 - Member recommendations and new Tag pages debut
• June 2008 - Member home pages debut
• July 2 2008 - additional modules for Member home pages released.
• ... 2008 - APIs freely available
• Sept. 2 2008 - CK quotations, epigraphs, and blurbers added [25] [26]
• Oct. 21 - Reviews for LibraryThing for Libraries added[27]
• Dec. 2008 ??? - Mike Bannister (ltmike; previously notmydadslibrary) joins LT as developer.

[edit] 2009

• Jan. 8 - "Will you like it?" predictive algorithm debuted[28]
• Jan. 8 - 35 million books
• Jan. 29 - Luke Stevens joined LT as developer.
• Jan. 29 - Integration with Twitter.[29]
• Jan. 29 - Feb. 8: Stats pages for living/dead authors (1/29[30]) and male/female (2/8[31]) authors are introduced; Common Knowledge contributions explode.[32]
• Feb. 3: Member Giveaways introduced (developed by ltmike).[33]
• Feb. 7: Authors are able to be disambiguated by grouping them with their works.[34]
• Feb. 9: Common Knowledge hits a million facts.[35]
• Feb. 28 - March 7: LT Week of Code
• Mar. 11: LibraryThing Mac Screen Saver introduced.[36]
• March 23: Introducing Chris Catalfo working on Koha integration for LibraryThing for Libraries[37]
• March 2009 - Lindsey Nichols has left LT.[38]
• April 1 2009 - New improved Widgets (coded by Luke Stevens)[39]
• April 9, 2009 - Widget statistics[40]
• April 9, 2009 - Work page customization, including ability to order and show/hide sections of the work page[41]
• late April 2009 - Legacy Libraries Compare Libraries and Common Knowledge clouds and Hot topics
• July 2009 - Published Reviews added[42]
• July 2009 - Main Author Role added[43]
• August 2009 - Author Twitter feeds added
• August 2009 - Luke Stevens (LibraryThingLuke) leaving LibraryThing.[44]
• September 2009 - Stephanie joined LibraryThing
• September/October 2009 - Dan joined LibraryThing

[edit] Major sources

• Statistics: LibraryThing's Website (Site Talk)
• State of the Thing - LT's periodic newsletter
• LibraryThing blog
• New Features (LibraryThing Group)
• Staff List (and history)
• User:Bnielsen#Million_marks