Sunday, February 22, 2009

Crowdsourcing at its Best

Yesterday's LibraryThing cataloging-party at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island headquarters went off really nicely. In just a few hours, about fifteen LT volunteers (from all over New England) and three ASRI staff entered the approximately 2,500 books in the circulating collection and a separate teaching collection, creating a full LT catalog for the library complete with tags and call number info.

It's a neat collection of natural history books, field guides (for birds, mammals, plants, even millipedes!) and other relevant titles, so it was fun to work with in that sense, and it was really great to see old friends and make new ones, including meeting several folks who I've corresponded with often. The staff at the center was great, providing refreshments and guidance on their collection as we entered the books.

Among the many pleasures of the day were getting to see other people using LT and seeing the number of ways in which people interact with the site, including some volunteers who hadn't used LT before (and who got a walk-through from none other than the founder of the site himself!). Those of us who use it every day got a chance to chat and debate about all sorts of plans and features too, which is always fun.

Some more pictures here, and I'm sure Tim will post later about the party as well.

[Edited to add: Tim's post is up, here]