BookPsychic: A new LT product for libraries

Here's the blog post: http://www.librarything.com/blogs/thingology/2012/08/bookpsychic-com-personal-re...

More comments to follow soon. Basically, we're interested in two things—what you think of it as a stand-alone thing and what you think is good (or bad) for LibraryThing itself to borrow.

Promising!

Quick notes:

We've already hashed out a lot of stuff on the Board for Extreme Thing advances—130 messages and counting. So I'm a little worried they'll be silence here. The loud-mouths are all on BETA. :) I have, however, asked them to move conversation here, where can now all see it.

As I said above, we're interested in (1) what you think of it as a product for libraries, pretending you're a regular library patron not a crazy LibraryThing member, (2) what you think of it for LibraryThing.

On the former, we're interested in:
* Look and feel praise and blame
* Bugs
* Potential improvements

On number two, I'm interested to hear what you think of some of the ideas at play here, including:
* The look and feel FOR LIBRARYTHING. We won't bring BookPsychic into LibraryThing untouched, but we do like some of the way it works. What do you think?
* An iterative, invitational rating system. I think we should add it. But LT would need some sort of "extra" step—where you decide whether or not to add a book (or books) to your library too.
* Genres

Some things are no-brainers. The Goodreads import on BookPsychic is MUCH better. And we're going to be adding the "Summary text" on the back of BookPsychic books. Also, you'll notice it understands "contains" relationships—it won't recommend the Fellowship of the Ring if you have LOTR.

I don't seem to be able to dismiss a recommendation.

ETA: OK, when I reload, rated and dismissed books seem to disappear from the recommendations list. I expected them to vanish at once when I clicked Not Interested.

I hope you haven't overlooked the comments about the text of the Save For Later and Not Interested buttons. I know I was thoroughly confused by what they meant and there were other confused people as well.

As a GR user this thrills me, I love the book recs thing that they implemented about a year or so ago? It's quite handy. This wouldn't replace the regular LT recs on book pages though, right? It'd just be a separate entity we could also use? Because I love those and would not want them sacrificed for this tool. But yeah I'm psyched about this. And summary text will be really great, that's another thing I miss over here. If I click on a book I'm unfamiliar with, I want at least a couple lines on what it is! If there's no reviews, I'm clueless! Plus reviews != descriptions, which is isn't their purpose, so it means even on a book with a couple reviews I still may not know much more about what's in the book than before I read them. So yeah, summaries are needed! :)

Also, you'll notice it understands "contains" relationships—it won't recommend the Fellowship of the Ring if you have LOTR.

How hard would it be to port that functionality to LT's own recommendations? That's been one of my most-wanted features for ages.

>7 lorax:

Not hard. I think this is going to be ported more robustly into LT. But we need to figure out what parts AREN'T ported first.

Bug-ish thing:
I'm in the "Just For You" section. If I click on "Show All", I see 6 rows of 4 books. If I try to get to the next page, by clicking on the "2" button or the right arrow, it refreshes the whole Just For You section and returns me to the original one-row-of-4 view.

>8 timspalding: Are you talking about this replacing LT's current recommendations system? They seem very different to me. I'd rather look at adding BookPsychic as a separate thing, or adding some elements of BookPsychic to the existing recommendations, rather than saying that LT recommendations are essentially going to become BookPsychic with a few exceptions.

Also, if this is going to be about LT's recommendation system more broadly, then I don't think you have to worry at all about silence.

ETA: Unless other people are also feeling like they've been burned too many times before. There are a million things that I might say about recommendations, but I'm trying to wait and hear what exact elements are open to discussion before wasting my time yet again. It's always so easy to succumb to the pointless enthusiasm, though....

As usual, xkcd has nailed the concept of on-line rating systems!

Nice.

cosmetic UI bug: on first landing with tablet in portrait mode, I find the view doesn't fully fit, and if I swipe right to left, the visual elements float transparently, unexpectedly. This is not true for landscape mode, all elements are nailed down as expected. Rotating from landscape to portrait causes elements to float unexpectedly. The line wrapping of topics in the left navigation column doesn't look right, for example, Biography & Memoir.

"There are a million things that I might say about recommendations, but I'm trying to wait and hear what exact elements are open to discussion before wasting my time yet again"

This - the key being the specificity of the recommendations. Is this particular work going ot be of interest to you, or is it a representation of the type of work you'll probably like.

LT currently does the latter very well, but is unfortunately also pretty much common sense. The former is far more useful, but difficult (especially given the absence of ratings).

HOw does one look at bookphysic to find out?

Somewhat put off by the fact that it insists on me rating books I have never read and probably never will. Okay: I could click "not interested", but somehow I get the impression I could go on doing that for hours before I get to the stuff that interests me. And clicking "not interested" doesn't work on "just for you".

Also: the choice of categories is dismal. Where are the art books?

But maybe that's too much just about this particular library - plus the fact that it's an American library and I happen to be European.

Not overenthusiastic at the moment, but trying to keep an open mind.

8>

I don't want BookPsychic ported. I like the current recommendation system. But I'm tired of seeing recommendations for Fellowship because I have LOTR. (As an example. That particular case doesn't happen for me, since I have two copies, one entered as the pieces and one as the whole).

>16 Nicole_VanK: I'm just going by the very similar deal on GR but- the way it gives you suggestions is based on things that you have added, so yeah it's wanting your input, else how will it know what to suggest? You add things either that you've read or that you want to read, and based on what you've added, it comes up with other suggestions it thinks are relevant. It actually shows you, over there, "because you have X title(s)," so you know exactly where the recs are coming from when they show up.

Also, the one on GR has not only genres, but suggestions based on your shelves (for here that'd be collections, I suppose? maybe tags?), which are actually listed above the genre ones. If that sort of thing was added here, it'd be better geared for users than the few genre selections listed on there now. I've added hundreds of books to my tbr pile based on the similar recs thing over on GR, and find it incredibly useful (moreso the groupings based on my shelves, than the genres in general).

Yeah, I suppose I could upload my library info - and I probably will in the end, if LT decides to go through with this all the way. Sure.

But for now I'm trying to play along and be just some visitor. I wouldn't ordinarily provide that much info to a site if I don't first see the benefits for me.

Besides the way the colours make my eyeballs bleed, I really have no desire to run through a set of uninteresting books rating them.

But I don't use recommendations much, anyway, except the member recommendations on certain books.

Ditto #20.

#14 by vy0123> cosmetic UI bug: on first landing with tablet in portrait mode, I find the view doesn't fully fit, and if I swipe right to left, the visual elements float transparently, unexpectedly. This is not true for landscape mode, all elements are nailed down as expected. Rotating from landscape to portrait causes elements to float unexpectedly. The line wrapping of topics in the left navigation column doesn't look right, for example, Biography & Memoir.

Yeah, I reported that there were some severe problems with my iPad 1 in the other thread. Never heard anything back on whether they were concerned enough for me to post details. Surely they have at least one iPad amongst the team.

Seriously though: I get some "Eragon" stuff in "Just for you". I don't want to read that crap. Okay, can happen: I click "not interested" - nothing happens. Normally any site would have lost me right there and then.

I rated ca. 50 books and then clicked on Just for You and was told I hadn't rated any books!?

Also, while rating books, I ran into a large number of authors who I have no intention of ever reading (Stephanie Meyer) or ever reading again (Ernest Hemingway). First I tried giving them 1 star ratings, but a different book by the author would appear. Then I tried saying I wasn't interested, only to have more books by the author appear. I wanted to be able to tell it to make the author entirely go away.

22: Yes. In fact I have one of each of the variants myself. :) The iPad bugs fall below those of other browsers in the rank of importance, at least this past week while we were trying to get it solid on IE7 for Portland Public Library users. Then I was traveling all day yesterday (to get to LT HQ in Maine.....DevMeeting2012!), so I'll get to some of the iPad bugs today.

Somewhat put off by the fact that it insists on me rating books I have never read and probably never will

Not at all. Just ignore then and click "rate more."

However, the fact that you THOUGHT you had to rate books you didn't know is a problem. Is it because "rate more" is too small? What could we do to dispel this?

suggestions based on your shelves

We have that, based on tags. But BP doesn't, obviously.

#26 by timspalding> However, the fact that you THOUGHT you had to rate books you didn't know is a problem. Is it because "rate more" is too small? What could we do to dispel this?

We've mentioned this in the previous thread and this one. The problem is "not interested" is a bit of a loaded term. It implies many things. We suggested "Skip" as a better alternative.

No, "skip" is worse. It implies that you need to skip it more than "not interested" does—at least in my opinion.

How about "no way" or "no thank you"?

> 26: Ah, no, I would possibly click "not interested" in such cases. "Rate more" never occurred to me - I haven't even rated this one yet. So that actually means "rate something else"? Okay, counter intuitive, but maybe that's just a language problem.

How about "no way" or "no thank you"?

Isn't that what "not interested" already means? It's what I mean if I click that option.

>27 brightcopy: - My thought was "Haven't read" (or "Haven't watched") for DVDs. But others think folks will assume they have to click the button if they haven't read the book. I don't think I would do that, but maybe I'm crazy :-)

A breif play, and it sort of works intuitively. If you're the click a few buttons and see what ti does type. Not that obvious where to actually get the reccommendations from. Some very weird covers.

Have once you get there, it's the same old series continutations you get anywhere. I already know about these. Maybe I need to have put in more time to go through and rate them, but that's dull and I have hundreds if not thousands of series books.

Isn't that what "not interested" already means? It's what I mean if I click that option.

Right. The problem is that some people are thinking you need to rate everything. I'm not sure this is a general problem—LT users tend to be serious and completistic, and not slack and lazy app grazers. But the problem is there. We need to communicate that it's slack and lazy—rate if you want, but if you don't that's fine too.

>31 jbd1:

Yeah. That's the problem. People will assume you have to do work. BookPsychic is not work.

Would it be possible for BookPsychic to support half-star ratings? I rate books on a 1-5 scale to the tenth of a point, so for me, there's a world of difference between a 4-star book and a 5-star book. I also like that the star ratings aren't pre-defined (ie 1=bad, 2=poor, etc.) I'm probably way overthinking ratings, but it really annoys me when sites define 2 stars as "it was okay", leaving only one grade to cover all levels of bad and three grades to cover all levels of good. (Okay, I've definitely overthought this...)

Overall, I like BookPsychic. I rated a whole bunch of books I liked and it recommended other books I also like (not an issue--how is it supposed to know what I've read?), which is better than some book recommenders I've used where I say I like X and I get recommendations for things that aren't remotely like X. Overall, I think it's better than the current LT recommendations feature, but not quite as good as Goodreads' system.

Can there be a default "haven't read"?

Not that obvious where to actually get the reccommendations from. Some very weird covers.

I think we need to pump up some labeling on "Just for You." People are assuming that the genres where you rate things are actually the recommendations. Actually, they DO bend towards the books it thinks you'll like—to help you narrow down. But it always has a "random" portion (at least 35% pure crazy-random) in order to prevent a "filter bubble." That is, without the random, you could rate ten Roman history books and it might never get you OUT of the Roman history hole; you'd just get deeper in.

Overall, I think it's better than the current LT recommendations feature, but not quite as good as Goodreads' system

To be clear, it's not trying to be either. It's a recommendation system for a library with 150k ISBNs (and 100,000 works). See my point?

28, 30> Yeah, I don't see how that solves the problem. With all terms, your problems is "does this term apply to my interest in the book or does it apply to the action of rating the book". As I mentioned before, I think there's no way to absolutely solve this in a short button-friendly label. But "not interested" (or "no way" or "no thank you") definitely skew towards the former category. "Skip" can be interpreted as either, but I think it's less likely to be seen as a measure of interest in a book. My original suggestion in the other thread was actually "Skip rating", which I think is even clearer though maybe not as "pretty".

There's many reasons to skip a book. One is "I can't rate it because I haven't read it, but I don't know if I want to read it." I often find that books I can't rate fall into different categories:
1) Hey, that looks like a book I want to read
2) Bleh, I hate that author even though I haven't read that book
3) I've heard so many terrible things about that book that I'm not going to read it
4) I don't know about that book. It doesn't seem that great right now but who knows maybe later I'll be desperate and check it out again. Or if I read something else by this author and like it.

To me, #1 is Save for later, #2 and #3 is the current "Not interested". #4... well, "Not interested" seems exactly the opposite of my thinking in this process. I'm interested, just not enough. And not right now.

>37 timspalding: Yeah, that makes sense. All I'm saying is, it does a good job of identifying what I like, which is better than I've experienced on most other sites. It would be great if my public library used it. Because the 1000+ books I already want to read just aren't enough. :)

TimSpalding #33 The problem is that some people are thinking you need to rate everything. I'm not sure this is a general problem—LT users tend to be serious and completistic...need to communicate that it's slack and lazy—rate if you want, but if you don't that's fine too.

I DID think that I HAD to rate in order to get more accurate recommendations. Hence my earlier comment - in the 'loud-mouth's' forum :) - that, like @BarkingMatt, I never rate books. That dislike and misunderstanding rather coloured my overall view. I saw nothing that suggested you could just move on and yet, somehow, still get good recommendations coming up in Just For You.

So ... a labeling/ info problem? and "No Thankyou" seems very apt to me.

For clarification - is "not interested" supposed to mean "this book does not look like my cup of tea; please remove it and depreciate similar books" or is it a neutral "remove this book from the recommendations; don't affect others"? Because I could read it both ways and to be honest I would find both useful.

Maybe the solution would be:

Save for later | No Thanks | Skip

?

>38 brightcopy:

I would also add to your list "5) That book is already sitting on my tbr mountain, so I want it out of a recommendations list but can't rate it yet"

#43 by Scorbet> Ah, yes, I'm quite familiar with that one, too. :D

"No Thank you" seems very apt to me.

Yeah, a "drop-dead" button would seem excessive.

For clarification - is "not interested" supposed to mean "this book does not look like my cup of tea; please remove it and depreciate similar books" or is it a neutral "remove this book from the recommendations; don't affect others"? Because I could read it both ways and to be honest I would find both useful.

I'm not sure I should tell you, since the point is the confusion.

However, it means "don't show me this ever again under any circumstances." It does not affect recommendations, except to never show the item itself.

All of the back-and-forth about the terminology of "Not interested" misses what seems like a key point to me -- that's the terminology Netflix uses. Netflix is going to be much more familiar to most people than LibraryThing, and I think aligning with their terminology is fine - "Save for Later" parallels "Add to Queue", and "Not Interested" appears in both systems.

46 timspalding However, it means "don't show me this ever again under any circumstances." It does not affect recommendations, except to never show the item itself.

! Shouldn't the not interested actually be part of the "teaching" process so that BP "learns" what the rater likes?

> 47: Netflix? What's Netflix? ;-)

ETA: Never mind. Just playing even more stupid than I really am.

>48 John_Vaughan:

We've gone back and forth about it. I think there are multiple reasons for using it. One is just to not see it again, not to hate on it.

I've imported my LT ratings.

In the "Just for You" section, every time I choose "Not interested" on a title (in any section), it reloads the same book. I've tried this multiple times with over 15 books.

> 51: Confirming. And that's an important piece part of what I meant above. I don't wan't to read "Eragon" - please stop advising it if I say I don't want it. If I didn't know you guys are behind this, and that you're trying to iron out the problems, something like this would be a real deal-breaker for me.

>50 timspalding:

So the only way right now of negatively influencing is to give the book one star? I have problems doing that to books that I have not actually read. (Even if I'm fairly certain I will not enjoy them for whatever reason.) This is particularly true of non-fiction when I just want to register my dislike of a topic as a whole and not indicate that the book is actually bad.

Overall, I think it's better than the current LT recommendations feature, but not quite as good as Goodreads' system

To be clear, it's not trying to be either. It's a recommendation system for a library with 150k ISBNs (and 100,000 works). See my point?

I don't really see your point. You keep mentioning the possibility of bringing this into LT itself, in some form. I'd think that would require comparing it to the existing recommendation system.

In the "Just for You" section, every time I choose "Not interested" on a title (in any section), it reloads the same book. I've tried this multiple times with over 15 books.

Bug. We're working on it.

I don't really see your point. You keep mentioning the possibility of bringing this into LT itself, in some form. I'd think that would require comparing it to the existing recommendation system.

It depends what you're evaluating. if you're evaluating the user interface, fine, although the interface is the part that's most likely to not go into LT easily. (LT is just a different animal and its users different animals too.)

If you're evaluating the quality of the recommendations, then it's not so fine. People are, for example, complaining that it's not giving them the deep and obscure recommendations that LT provides. It's not because it's restricted to a good but finite small-city's public library collection.

>55 timspalding: I still don't think it's clear how this would fit with LT recommendations. If our recommendations are based on all the books we've listed, or on a specific set of books that we've selected for recommendations, the result is going to be different than if we start by rating a bunch of (popular) books.

Many of my highest-rated books are children's books that I don't include in LT recommendations. My use-for-recommendations collection here consists of what I've read since joining LT. Looking at ratings instead gives different results that tend on the whole to be more reflective of my past tastes than my present ones. I can get good results in categories like non-fiction, but the top recommendations are much less useful.

How would the rating-based recommendations interact with the collection-based recommendations?

How would the rating-based recommendations interact with the collection-based recommendations?

This is a key question. I think the answer is that there needs to be some way to move things from one to the other. For example, it would keep track of rated-but-not-in-library books, and allow you to add them to your library. This would be my preference.

Or—don't start screaming!—we might automatically add anything you rate to your library. That, by the way, is how GR works. If you rate it, you have it. They push people to rate books right off the bat, throw popular books at them and consider every rated book as "yours." I think that creates a lot of boring libraries, but it does get people started. If we did that, however, it would be choice—either an opt-in feature, or, if not, definitely something you could opt out of!

Or both. Or something else.

I like the book descriptions when they are available. When they are not, the back of the record looks mighty empty and there is very little to go on to know if the book is interesting. I'd be interested in seeing that space used for a small tag cloud, library subjects and the number of available reviews.

I don't have a problem with you adding rated books to our library. They could go in the default Read collection ;). (I wink, but I'm also serious.)

I think opt-out would be fine--which is generally my opinion about most features.

I do hope this feature won't be set up in a way that encourages people to give one-star ratings to books that they haven't actually read, though. It seems to be tending that way a bit right now, with one-star ratings making it less likely for similar books to be recommended in the future, and "not interested" just getting rid of the particular book.

I hope you'll bring back half-stars.

And I still don't see this as a substitute for recommendations based on a specific set of books. The recommendations page could have different options, though: see recommendations based on my ratings, based on all my books, based on the books I've read, based on the books I've read recently, based on my custom collection preferences.

Or—don't start screaming!—we might automatically add anything you rate to your library.

Starts screaming!!!!

Seriously though: I'm willing to help out, in many ways. But if you ever start adding books to my catalogue without my say-so I will be severely miffed. Maybe that's how GR works - fine - there's good reason why some people prefer LT. Don't mess that up.

P.s.: Just as a precaution, I'll avoid Bookpsycho from here on.

I'd imagine that you would have plenty of warning, so that unwanted books wouldn't actually end up being added to your catalogue.

I hope you'll bring back half-stars.

I didn't take them away. It's a separate product. I agree that LT would need them.

I also think it would be a good idea if there was a way to do it on BP—for LT users alone, really. For example, there could be a setting in the accounts page that turned rating into a two-stage process. That's the trick of half-star rating. It takes two clicks. That's hard to do when the first click makes it go away.

But if you ever start adding books to my catalogue without my say-so I will be severely miffed

That's why I said it'd be optional.

Also, the one on GR has not only genres, but suggestions based on your shelves (for here that'd be collections, I suppose? maybe tags?), which are actually listed above the genre ones. If that sort of thing was added here, it'd be better geared for users than the few genre selections listed on there now.

Presumably by "here" you mean BookPsychic, rather than LT, but LT has had tag-based recommendations for ages.

> 61: Maybe, but the key words are : we might automatically add anything you rate to your library. For me that would be totally unacceptable.

> 62: That's why I said it'd be optional.

Right, okay, don't scare me like that then.

>62 timspalding: What's wrong with the current LT system, where the first click is a full star, next is a half star, and the third makes it go away? Do you think a lot of people who were trying to make it go away would give up when they got to the half star?

With opt-out things, I assume that there will always be clear instructions and notice so that people who want to opt-out will be able to do so before anything bad happens. It's more a matter of what to do for the 95% of people who don't care.

Okay. I've run a brief test, and so far I like it a lot.

Here's why:
One of my main problems with LT is the public rating system. I feel rating different books' realtive merits impossible, even meaningless. It may work for others, not for me.

On the other hand, I do use tactic voting on selected books to get recomendations of works with similar topics/styles/themes/motifs/etc on Amazon and other sites. With good results. And that's exactly what Book Psychic let me do, once I'd imported my LT library. Without

So three cheers, and then some.

PS: It's also fun.

What's wrong with the current LT system, where the first click is a full star, next is a half star, and the third makes it go away? Do you think a lot of people who were trying to make it go away would give up when they got to the half star?

The BP system is that the book goes away and is replaced by another. If we want that functionality we need to figure out how to do it, and allow half-ratings.

I feel rating different books' realtive merits impossible, even meaningless. It may work for others, not for me.

Yes, something may be a brilliant comic book, but how do you compare that to a work by a Philosopher. It's daft.

>68 timspalding: Oh, oops, I misunderstood what you meant by "makes it go away".

>67 geitebukkeskjegg: How does "tactic voting" differ from regular rating?

Yes, something may be a brilliant comic book, but how do you compare that to a work by a Philosopher. It's daft.

I'm sympathetic. Clearly this would not be the only way recommednations are generated. Incidentally, if you bring stuff in from LT, it generates recommendations on the books, even if you haven't rated them. (It considers a no-rate as a 3-star.)

> 72: Sorry, I probably didn't express myself clearly. I was merely commenting on the effort to compare such books. Huzzah for you guys trying to find a system that can deal with such stuff.

Isn't it crazy how we can use the same numbers to count physical objects, and refer to time, and measure angles? Insane, I tell you.

Or, you know, context.

"As comic books go, this one is average: 3 stars"

"As philosophy books go, this one is excellent: 5 stars"

>71 _Zoe_: LT's regular rating is, supposedly, your public opinion of a book's merit expressed on a scale from 1 to 5.

"Tactic voting", for want of a better phrase, was meant to describe rating certain books ridiculously high and some others way down to generate recommendations fitting a particular profile. I.e. on Amazon. Not a statement on the books' relative value, just input parameters to a recommendation algorithm,

>75 geitebukkeskjegg: Thanks for clarifying.

It sounds like exactly what I was worrying about: breaking LT's currently very useful rating system.

Maybe it would be better to keep BookPsychic separate after all--that is, not add the books and ratings to the users' catalogues.

LT's currently very useful rating system

Say what?, since when does rating anything on LT achieve anything at all????

It's why I - mostly - gave up on rating anything on this site. Why bother? Please correct me if I'm wrong though.

>77 Nicole_VanK: Yeah, I know, the people who decided a priori that ratings are useless and therefore don't look at them don't get any value from them, unsurprisingly. But many people who do actually look at them regularly have found that they're a useful indicator of how good the book is.

I almost always look at LT ratings when deciding whether to read a book. The exceptions are obscure academic books or new books that don't have enough ratings.

Actually, I don't really like the rating system on NetFlix. One, I don't know what Not Interested does so if there's a movie that maybe I might want to see some day I'll just leave it there clogging up my recommendations. And two, there's no "It was ok" rating. You either have to say you liked it or didn't like it, so I ended up rating a whole lot of movies that I liked them because I didn't want to say that I hated them. And then with all those so-so movies clogging up Like, there was no place for movies that I liked more than the so-so ones but I didn't like well enough to say that I loved them.

> 78: Ah yes, should have thought of that. Ratings don't actually do anything for me, as is, but might be useful for other users.

You've just given me an impulse to rate more of my books.

Another way to handle the LT-ificiation of this would be to have a "add to (collection menu)" option on LT, so you could use the ratings UI without actually rating anything.

Yeah, for books I have read I have found a fuzzy but useful correlation between the LT rating and how good I think the book was, so I definitely look at ratings too. With a few notable exceptions, I know I will prefer a book (in a genre I read) with a 4.2 rating to a book with a 3.2 rating.

> 81: Now you've lost me. No clue what you're on about.

>81 timspalding:

My point is that I think this UI—with some tweaks—is a useful thing. It's a good way to get "into" LibraryThing and a good way to pick off some books you read but haven't got in your library.

Some people will want to rate books but not add them to collections. We can do that. One way or another, rating a book and adding it to your library will be de-coupled or de-couple-able.

But SOME people want the reverse—they want to add books to their collections but NOT rate them. They object to rating books on principle. If so, this UI is currently not so good.

We could change that by allowing you to use it to add books to your collections but NOT rate them.

Basically, on any LT version of this, we add a way to "not rate" a book, but have it go to a collection.

>80 Nicole_VanK: Thanks! I'd certainly appreciate more ratings.

>81 timspalding: Yeah, I don't understand this either.

>84 timspalding: Basically, a "Books I've Read" collection?

No. You're not understanding me. This has nothing to do with that. Besides, the sort of people who object to ratings on principle are not likely to want a one-size-fits-all collection of any sort.

Started an import of ratings from our (rather large) library about 30 minutes ago. It's still chugging away. You folks might want to kill the import if its hanging up other processes.

I'm not someone who normally looks for recommendations. I have enough to read already, so I was just playing around because I'm interested in how software figures out what a person is like. So if my library ratings don't load, I won't care.

It's a good way to get "into" LibraryThing and a good way to pick off some books you read but haven't got in your library.

>87 timspalding: No. You're just so dead set against the idea that you won't even consider the most logical way to do things.

Of course nothing will be one-size-fits all, and some people will want to use different collections.

That still leaves you will the question of defaults: when people want to note that they've read some books, where's the logical place for those books to go?

Yeah, it's surely died. Reload the page and see if anything happened. And give me your account. (Is it you?)

I don't think there's a logical default place for people to put books they don't want to rate. Not wanting to rate a book—but wanting it to have the EFFECT of rating—is a somewhat unusual thing to do. I think we can assume those people don't want to be herded into a "read" collection.

> 84: I will absolutely not deny this is possibly a useful thing. And sure, tweak as you see fit. No, I don't object to rating books on principle - I just (mostly) gave up on it because it didn't actually do anything here on LT.

Anyway, just trying to be the best "devils advocate" I can be under the circumstances. Nothing personal , and certainly not against LT moving forward.

90:

Reloaded the page and it did seem to finish:

"3,522 items were imported into your ratings.

7,308 items were imported for you to rate."

I used the aulsmith account to load it, but then it asked for an email address and user name just for BookPsychic, which I will put in a private message on timspalding.

Edited to clarify message responded to.

>91 timspalding: It still seems like you're more interested in ideology than in simple, practical features.

Bug fix: If you were getting multiples of books when you rate—especially more than two, or regularly—or if you were rating and it wasn't sticking, we've fixed the bug.

Basically, if you entered BP from the PPL catalog AND you had it set to refuse third-party cookies—which is default on Safari only—it was in trouble.

We are currently opening BP in a new window, not the "lightbox." We will have a better work-around soon.

>94 _Zoe_:

No, let's add a "add to read" button.

Then people would wonder what happened if they rated and didn't add to read, and people would want to add it to other collections. So then we add another button that adds it to other collections. My guess is that people want to add to their library more often than they add to read, so that ought to really have a button. Then we need another button for adding it to other collections, etc.

I wonder how many people who don't like ratings as a concept would be okay with replacing stars with:

Loved it
Liked it
It was okay
Disliked it
Hated it

It's really the same thing as a 5 star rating system. I know, I know, sometimes your opinion on a work is nuanced, and there's parts you really like and there's parts you don't, etc. etc. But the ability to boil that all down isn't really a superpower. Hell, Roger Ebert's somehow been able to do it for movies for over half a century...

But then, I think some people don't like rating systems because they don't like rating systems.

No, let's add a "add to read" button.

Because that's not ambiguous at all. :D

>96 timspalding:

No. Stars are better known, and people like to mean different things by ratings. Lots of users describe what their stars means on their profile.

Anyway, I'm not going to talk about ratings and reads any more. This is very much a side issue to this new site.

#99 by timspalding> Ratings are a side issue on a site that's entire mode of operation is rating books to decide which books you'd like based on those ratings?

*boggle*

No, ratings and reads. Maybe I should have said ratings and automatic "read" collections.

#101 by timspalding> Ah, okay. Yeah, I'm unexcited by that whole tangent. I mean, I'm for a default system Read collection with special handling, but it's a different topic.

Meh. GoodReads automatically adds books to a "read" shelf when we rate them.

LT features often seem to get way more complicated than necessary while avoiding basic functionality. It's like that time when people wanted a way to separate their wishlists from the rest of their catalogues.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out, anyway.

I think there is some merit to having a BookPsychic style interface to LT for people who find adding their whole library too daunting or tedious a task. I don't think it would be of much use to established LT members, but it might be a good way to bring in new people.

To make it work I think we would need two other features, generic editions and an option to update records in place from a library source. Conveniently, both of those features have been requested for LT already.

I also think there would have to be some kind of strong no choice that would knock down similar books in the suggestions without rating them and adding them to one's LT library.

And it would probably be best if BP added books went into a special collection at first. Members could leave them there, but there would be a subtle pressure to organize them into more standard collections.

>104 eromsted: I think you're probably right on all points.

Should we keep in mind that people 'rate' books for different reasons? I 'rate' my books so I can remember how much I liked them and so someone else can see if I liked them.

I DO NOT use it for LT recommendations. Which I NEVER look at. I get my TBR suggestions from reviews by fellow LT'ers.

I can readily see how it might be useful in a library and would be more interested in seeing results from libraries that start using it. But for myself. A non-issue.

PS This system seems to work so well for me, that my TBR list based on LT reviews (which I keep in a word doc) is already so long that I probably won't live long enough to get to the bottom of it not counting all the new ones that will get added.

No computer system can pick a book for me that I would want to read better than my reading reviews does. Who are the LT'ers that need such a list generated for them?

107>,

Perhaps it is a situation of "if you like this, then you might want to read this item from your library next."

People who run data systems (like libraries, bookseller sites, and entities like NetFlix) often wish to suggest similar items of interest to encourage repeat use of their products and services. Sometimes they even want to steer the preference system to draw attention to some new item that is being promoted.

I get useless emails from eBay that always talk about "Recommendations Especially for You" that invariably ignore what I search for and buy there and instead recommend Coach purses, Krups coffee makers, the latest iPhone, and a dozen other things I won't buy on eBay regardless the price. I go there for collectibles or reading copies of books and little else. Of course, eBay hasn't figured that out yet. They are too busy trying to be the next Amazon and driving away the sellers who offer the stuff I want to buy.

The reason for mentioning the above is that a bad or seemingly irrelevant suggestion system does more to turn people away from an entire company than not having one at all.

Amazon has the "customers who bought this also bought" suggestions. Often times these are pretty nonsensical and seem to be directed to whatever is most popular or part of a paid promotion at the time.

James

Continuing from 93:

I assume you're seeing the syntax errors I'm getting when trying to look at the 2000+ recommendations generated by my 10,000+ item library. I'll stop torturing the software now.

So far it's doing a good job of finding the authors I already like and telling me what books Portland has by those authors that aren't in my library. I, personally, don't need a sophisticated piece of software to do that. I can just look my favorite authors up in the author browse of the library's catalog. However, you have statistics from how many people took advantage of the feature on LT recommendations that turns off author's you own. Maybe most people do want to be reminded that their favorite authors have additional books ...

103>

It's like that time when people wanted a way to separate their wishlists from the rest of their catalogues.


The main sticking point, IIRC, was that they wanted to cripple the site for others by allowing people to disable All Collections so that other people were forced to look at their catalog one collection at a time. That's hardly "basic", that's a fairly fundamental philosophical shift from the status quo where you organize your data how you want to and I look at it how I want to.

>110 lorax: The status quo was to have a whole separate account for a wishlist, or to leave it out entirely. Nothing would have changed.

>106 mysterymax:/107 I can see why well written reviews from someone you trust would be more helpful than recommendations based on ratings, especially given the dearth of ratings here on LT.

I am curious, however, about how you decide which books to read the reviews of? Surely a recommendation system would at least point you in the direction of books that you may like, and from there you can read reviews to make the final decision?

>107 mysterymax:
my TBR list based on LT reviews ... is already so long that I probably won't live long enough to get to the bottom of it

Ditto. LT reviews is a beautiful thing, and has become one of my primary sources for checking out new books. Once I've become aware of their existence.

No computer system can pick a book for me that I would want to read better than my reading reviews does. Who are the LT'ers that need such a list generated for them?

Well, me for one. Anything that will throw new reading experiences at me. New, unknown and within my current search parameters. TagWatch used to do that. In it's absence, BP looks like a good thing. (I'll check reviews next, of course.)

>76 _Zoe_:
It sounds like exactly what I was worrying about: breaking LT's currently very useful rating system.

No. BP ratiings do not replicate back to LT. First thing I tested, and an absolute for it's usability.
That's the SECOND reason I'll not use LT's public rating system. The first is, I personally find it meaningless. The second is, I would not want to corrupt other users data by bending the system to my own purposes.

>113 geitebukkeskjegg: Well, they don't currently go back to LT. It sounded like Tim was considering bringing them in somehow.

But thanks for checking, and I hope that everyone else is equally cautious :)

No. BP ratiings do not replicate back to LT. First thing I tested, and an absolute for it's usability.

Just a note: The product is designed for libraries and regular people at libraries, not for LT members specifically. We can and—I promise—will make it possible to bring back these ratings into LT in some way. But the product is designed for the 3 billion people in the world with a public library(1), not for the 1 million or so LT members.

Because of this, there are two ways I'd like you to look at this—as a product on its own, pretending you aren't a LibraryThing user, and as a set of ideas and features that could improve LT. The latter presumes that anything we borrow is fully and completely part of LibraryThing. That ratings would "stay" is taken for granted there.

We did consider making BookPsychic a stand-alone non-library thing—for LT people, GR people and etc. We've decided against it. Libraries don't have anything like this, and they have a library behind them as their context and ultimate use goal. A stand-alone app like this not for libraries would be diverting, but features like this exist in other products, and as a stand-alone it doesn't have a context to hold onto people.

---

1. Made-up number.

Makes sense. As is, we're just trying to get along with "Portland Public Library" though, even when some of us happen to live in entirely different parts of the world. I understand the test-case thingy, but it does complicate things for some of us.

111> Nothing would have changed in that respect, no. But changing from a "let me see other people's books in the way that I choose" to "only let me see other people's books in the specific ways they permit" would be a change. I'm not just talking about Wishlists, I'm talking about the specific separation mechanism that was proposed. Allowing Wishlist, and only Wishlist, to be excluded from All Collections would be a different proposal that I don't think would have been as controversial.

>115 timspalding: So, I think it may be a problem when people are encouraged to use ratings for some purpose other than expressing their opinion of the book as accurately as possible, and when that information then comes back to LT. LT's ratings, like tags, are more reliable than those on other sites because people are rating for their own records. When you throw in a different purpose that doesn't entirely align with the original one, some of that may be lost, and the average ratings won't be as useful for getting a sense of what people actually think of the book.

>117 lorax: I'd have been happy to exclude only Wishlist. But then we get into the sort of thing that happened here when I talked about a Read collection: How could we possibly do something special for one collection and not others? People will want to use different collections for the same purpose. Etc. etc. Again, it's the requirement for absolute flexibility (and complication) getting in the way of the basic functionality. That was my point.

After a little bit of training the recommendations sort of make sense, but are not particularly brilliant or insightful, though I suspect this is somewhat unavoidable with a tool that probably relies on most commonly shared reads, and the catalog of a general public library that doesn't aim to be at the cutting edge of my favorite genres.

Two things I noticed :

• It doesn't seem to grasp after a certain number of "One *" or "Not interested" ratings that there are some series and authors that no, thank you, I don't want to read, and would appreciate if they showed up a lot less often in my recs.

• Doesn't really seem to have a way to properly "put aside" items. I try to "save for later" some books, because they're already either in my TBR pile or on my radar of titles to possibly pick up. So in a sense they're *good* recommendations but I neither can/want to rate or discard them now, I want them out of the way, not popping back up randomly.

I wonder what the result would be if you polled a decent sample of the LT userbase on ratings and recs. I'm especially talking about the ones who aren't the subset that are active on the inside-baseball groups. I would be very unsurprised to find that a sizeable majority think the ratings they are giving books are already being taken into account for recommendations.

This thought was sparked by Zoe worrying about ratings being used "for some purpose other than expressing their opinion of the book as accurately as possible." I just don't see the lack of alignment between rating things on BP and on LT.

>I would be very unsurprised to find that a sizeable majority think the ratings they are giving books are already being taken into account for recommendations.

You'd win that bet. I'm surprised that they aren't! Why on earth not?

Just because a book is in my library doesn't mean I liked it.

>120 brightcopy: Hmm, maybe you're right about that. It would be interesting if they did a big user survey one day.

I think BP encourages extremes more than LT does: giving a 5 rating rather than a 4 will mold the results more quickly.

#121 by Morphidae> You'd win that bet. I'm surprised that they aren't! Why on earth not?

Well, I think it's a fair argument and we've went into it ad nauseam several times before. Hopefully I can give a quick summary of the "don't use ratings point of view" and we can avoid having a huge tangent on it.

Basically, the fact that you thought you'd like a certain book (indicated by it being in your collection) is very indicative of whether or not you'll actually like a book that can be connected to it through other people's cataloging.

#122 by _Zoe_> I think BP encourages extremes more than LT does: giving a 5 rating rather than a 4 will mold the results more quickly.

Yeah, I can see your point on that. There's very little immediate feedback on LT when it comes to recommendations. They kind of live in their own world to some degree.

119> Another person who thinks that the current interface is confusing!

1) Clicking Not Interested just means that you don't want to see that book pop up again. It has no effect on the recommendations.

2) Save for later means that you want to put them on a list of items that you might want to check out from that library. Presumably it doesn't have an affect on recommendations either.

My opinion is that ratings are the wrong paradigm for this since they imply that you have an opinion about the book itself, which you may not have read, but you still have no interest in reading. If the stars had a label something like "How interested I am in reading this book" I think that would better reflect the real purpose of them.

>123 brightcopy: Incidentally, Tim has frequently made the comparison to movies where the best recommendations are apparently based on what you've seen, rather than what you've actually liked. For some reason he hasn't considered applying a similar approach to books, though: the best recommendations might be based on what we've read. I adjusted my recommendation collections to take this into account--my recommendations are now based on what I've read since joining LT--and I've found that it's a lot better at coming up with things that I will actually read.

One thing I think may be kind of different (or maybe not, who knows?) for how I look for new reading is that I tend to look for new authors, not just new books. Once I settle on an author as a potential new one to follow, I might poke around and see if there's a specific book I should start with. This often has to do with starting at the beginning of a series or maybe if it took a few books for them to find their voice.

I think this is possibly related to me being a fan of scifi more than mainstream fiction. Authors in the former genre seems to be more prolific (on average) once they've managed to break into the game. There's always exceptions, of course.

121>

In addition to what brightcopy says (which is very important), other arguments are:

1. Not everyone uses ratings. The actual effect of considering ratings will thus be significantly muted for everyone.

2. People who work on recommendation systems are actually divided about how useful ratings are in improving recommendations. It's not as obvious as you might think.

>123 brightcopy: Basically, the fact that you thought you'd like a certain book (indicated by it being in your collection) is very indicative of whether or not you'll actually like a book that can be connected to it through other people's cataloging.

Well, I guess I'm different from a lot of readers then in that I try to stretch myself out of my usual genres and it doesn't always go well. For instance, I've tried westerns a few times and they just aren't my cup of tea. But I have a few in my collection. They have poor ratings though so I wouldn't think they'd get counted in my recommendations. When I go to recommendations, I want recommendations for new authors based on books I liked. Not books by authors I've read already and certainly not based on books I disliked. Guess that's why I've never found LT recommendations to work well for me.

It is almost as if it should be a two-part question:

Have you read this book?

If yes, how do you rate it?

If no, how likely would you want to read it?

James

128>

Having "a few" books in a particular area isn't gong to significantly move your recommendations in that direction, though.

>129 Keeline: I like that, I think that'd solve a lot of this debating going on.

But would it really make the app better for largest audience?

If it creates more clarity, then yes, I'd think so.

#133 by @PolymathicMonkey> Adding more options with more stuff for people to read and understand doesn't create global clarity. It might create it for some subset, though. But really, at the end of the day BP is aiming to be a simple app without a lot of explanations or fiddly stuff. I think they don't want you to have to care how it gets recommendations, just that it does. It's supposed to be very streamlined. Adding more ornaments to the tree isn't going to really fit with that.

*shrug* Given my use of the similar system on GR, it's not an issue for me personally. But that seemed to clarify the issues that people were having with the labels, so...

Since I don't use any recommendations feature, this does nothing for me.

Doesn't really seem to have a way to properly "put aside" items. I try to "save for later" some books, because they're already either in my TBR pile or on my radar of titles to possibly pick up. So in a sense they're *good* recommendations but I neither can/want to rate or discard them now, I want them out of the way, not popping back up randomly.

If you do "save for later" they shouldn't appear anywhere else. Are you finding them pop up? Can you give me an example? (Also, get me the debug information on the last line of the "About" page, so I know who's you.)

It is almost as if it should be a two-part question: Have you read this book? / If yes, how do you rate it? / If no, how likely would you want to read it?

There are many ways of making a system more complex. One might further have people say how sure they are about their not-read stars, etc. The system is simple because simple has it's own advantages.

Since I don't use any recommendations feature, this does nothing for me.

Duly noted.

timspalding 115> We can and—I promise—will make it possible to bring back these ratings into LT in some way.

The key word is "possible". An application that AUTOMATICALLY copies your input elsewhere is fundamentally different from an application that LET YOU CHOOSE to have your input copied. Which will it be?

>137 timspalding: As an example, I'm fairly sure I had to rate away Frankenstein several times in the same sitting. Or "Save for later" Redemption Ark (which happens to be in TBR mount) several times with it showing back up among the books to be rated. Refreshing the page seems to correct that though.

138> In three other thread he said it would be optional.

Which will it be?

Agreed. I think it should be possible, but not automatic.

The initial page, when I first go on BookPsychic and start rating books, seems to be working fine, though after I had rated about 300, it started giving me duplicates, side by side. Maybe I was clicking through too fast for it? So I tried giving it a few seconds between rating one book and rating the next book, but it would still give me the same title in two slots.

Then I logged in with my LT account. The "Just For You" page seems either buggy or counter-intuitive, depending on whether it's supposed to be doing what it does. If a title shows up on that page and I click "Not Interested," the cover fades out, but then it is replaced by the same book I just clicked away. Same thing if I click "Save for Later." In my mind, clicking either of those buttons should make the book go away from that list, especially if it's going to do the cover-fadeout thing. If it's supposed to stay there, it shouldn't look like it's trying to go away. Am I making any sense?

Also I sort of hate to rate editions / translations (of classics) I've never even seen. I may think something of the original, or of the translation that happened to come my way - but how on earth would I know if that applies to the translation this library throws my way.

But, again, that's maybe just because I'm not a New-England library patron. Or maybe because I'm just too picky. However: deeply unimpressed so far. Maybe that's mostly because the selection as presented is too narrow. Still trying to keep an open mind about this. But, as is: bah, humbug!

Impressed to see Tim O'Reilly promoting BookPsychic on Twitter.

After playing with BookPsychic for a bit I have one serious complaint. There doesn't appear to be anyway to search for books to rate. You can search the catalog, but that takes you away from BookPsychic. I had to click through a lot of pages to find even one book that I'd read. It was a tedious business. Now this might be just a symptom of the fact that it has no starting idea of what I've read and like, so it starts with the most common books.

Since this is for libraries, is it going to know about which books you've previously checked out? That would at least be a helpful starting place.

Some usability issues to think about:

The left side menu is too long to fit on one screen. This means that it has to scroll with the page. But the page is much longer than the menu, so when you go through the page rating books you have to scroll back up to the top of the page to find the menu. It might be better to use a shorter, heirarchical menu that is fixed.

Well, I was going to write more, but I have an 11 week old puppy that is growling at me because he wants to PLAY!

145 is it going to know about which books you've previously checked out?

Most US public libraries erase the knowledge of books you've checked out after you've returned them. It's a requirement in some states. Don't know about Maine.

>145 fredbacon:/146 Yep, exactly. If you search for "public library privacy laws" you can find the applicable information for your state.

Having just whiled away a couple of hours rating books (how did you know that is my internet weakness?), I have not spent more time reading this whole thread. Here are my thoughts.

I want it, and I want it now for my library. Not sure how that works when I don't have any voice in what my library does.

I love the look, and especially the logo (Bewitched, very cute). Love the colors and the way it works.

I am not the brightest internet kid on the block, but having rated lots of movies at Netflix this seemed pretty intuitive to me. Refreshing the page seemed to get rid of the books I wasn't interested in, and the "Rate more" at the bottom of the page was oh-so-very-seductive, which is why I spent lots more time there than I intended.

Since this isn't the rating system for our own books, I don't see any need for more or half stars. This is general, like/dislike/love stuff simply to give the magic genie in my computer an idea of my preferences to help it suggest books. No biggie, just fun stuff.

It's impressive. Considering this was an idea that LT was discussing before I started five years ago, it's amazing to finally see it.

Tim, I think your point about the library being the star and the endpoint is spot on. It shouldn't be another site to rate things for social or data nerd reasons. It should be an efficient and fun interface for getting people to books. The path from BP to me reading a(n e)book should be as short as possible. I think that's what makes this really exciting.

The mobile experience is pretty broken. I think the most compelling use of BP for me would be on the bus, messing around on my phone, so that's pretty important.

It's unclear that you have new recommendations to look at. The "rewards cycle" should be really short. The thing updates on the sidebar, but if I'm scrolled down the page, it isn't clear I've got new stuff to look at. Once I've rated a few there should be a message like, "Awesome! Want to see what A.L.E.X. 1, our psychic robot librarian, has for you?"

I also think that there should be a hook for email. I've rated some stuff. Send me an email in a month with some new stuff I'd like. BP could be an amazing tool for getting people to make a habit of using the library in that regard, and be a source of much better email than what I usually get from the library.

BP and email are two prongs of the same fork. Hey, you like wasting time, and you like books, why don't you waste some time with us. (Some) people actually really like getting short timely emails on their phones (what at my current gig we call "poor man's push notifications".)

Honestly I could see the whole thing being over email, no account generated. I save some books, put in my email, you send me a link so I can get back to my stuff later. Every week you send me more stuff, with a link to get back in. there's no reason BP needs to know my name or who my friends are to be useful.

I would be more inclined to use that than something where I don't know if it's posting that I liked The Big Butt Book or whatever on Facebook. (Contrarily, it posting that I gave 1984 five stars is just social spam. Nobody's going to be like, Casey likes classic dystopian novels? Why, I never knew! The "deep cuts" I've read are possibly interesting but you'd have to use BP a shitload to get down to those. And those people really interested are probably already following me on LT or Goodreads.)

So the ratio of emails sent to Facebook thingies posted should be about a million to zero.

The horizontal loading bar is a wonderful bit of design work. The whole design stands out as kid-friendly, too. I think schools will really like this. (Though that's more charity work than a business opportunity as we all know.) But this could be an amazing front door to the library for schools, especially if you could close the loop between BP and LA. LA is inherently more kid friendly than a standard catalog, too. Kids can figure out a mobile app. Could this be an app you hand to a 10 year old and they're spending the rest of the day reading on their tablet instead of listening to the hippity hop and playing the XBoxes?

Fonts are blurry for the "more details" (retina iPhone, FF), and weirdly eye-straining (maybe due to the gradient?) on Firefox. Cramming text inside of a little box inside of a little box doesn't work. Text should come up in a lightbox. Possibly with links for more info about the work that keep me inside BP. Finding a book I like, then clicking through to the catalog, is a little clumsy. I'm happy to go to the catalog at the "buy" stage, but not necessarily at the "ooh, this looks interesting" stage. I get metaphor whiplash going between two very different UIs.

From the "rated" page it's not totally clear how to rate more stuff. Maybe there is too much left hand nav, but I just block out that I go to "All Topics" to get back to that cool view I started out at. Me want click shiny button.

The deep link from BP to LA doesn't work. I end up at the front page of LA.

The part that might be good for LT to borrow would be having it be an extremely short distance between clicking on stuff and reading stuff. A first chapter, a shitty gutenberg.org copy, whatever. Some preferences about where links go, and logic to send me to the best copy. This is a short attention span product, and it's great because of that. Being able to move ratings around in a site-agnostic way is somewhat important, but actually saving what I've rated anywhere, telling my friends about it, whatever is a very secondary goal, I think.

I dunno, maybe LT is selling against itself two ways if you guys try to repurpose this. Because as a general purpose site I want it to hook up with my local library whether they've bought it or not, probably, and I want to export the data, not just send it to LT. As a 3rd party site it makes sense but the affiliate money, and getting some percent of people to join LT through it, is probably not enough to make that a viable option.

A site that's an agent/bot that finds me interesting books -- particularly ones I could read for free and/or right now -- is a very compelling idea but I don't know how it fits into the larger gestalt. I would be concerned that it would turn out like local/events where it is an amazing feature and data but it's really gets buried as a small subfeature on a larger site and would have to be its own thing to really take off.

I think that something smarter and more targeted than google alerts or the standard "rate some stuff on this one site (Netflix/Amazon/etc.) and we'll recommend you stuff in the same silo" is going to come along and really kill it, and you have the start of that here (well, you would if you had an "OpenURL for the masses" type routing system for book metadata in place, too.) But that is seriously getting into the weeds.

tl;dr: has to kill on mobile, shorten loop between rating and reading.

1 Aetherial Library Extrasensory Xenobot

>149 caseydurfee: I think you have to distinguish between Local and Local Events. Local Events didn't work out because they were too transient; the effort involved for a user to enter an event is generally too much for the amount of impact it's likely to make (none), so LT has to be dependent on other sources, like the bookstores themselves. But then the independent bookstores decided that they don't actually want to promote their events because they're trying to stick with the whole dying-bookstore theme, or something.

Local itself, on the other hand, has plenty of potential as a source of data about less-transient bookstores. It just hasn't gotten the development time it needs. The maps are small and slow to load; there's no good way to figure out which are the best bookstores in a city that I'm visiting; etc.

I do think BookPsychic could do well as an independent app, though.

After playing around with it some more, noted three irritating aspects of BP recommendations:

1. Clicking "Not interested" on an recommendation does nothing whatsoever (reported by several others, I believe)
2. Apparantly, several sessions of rating books does not cause recommenations to be recalculated. Just added to.
3. Apparantly, sugegstions are always presented in time sequence from first to last recommendation made. The logical approach would be last to first. The user would want to see new recommendations first.

I have a question that might be slightly unrelated. Does it cost anything for libraries to sign up to use book psychic?

> 152 Yes, it's a subscription service, part of LibraryThing for Libraries.