We've just passed our second anniversary on Library Thing.

The past year was a bit slower than the previous. Here's where the stats I've been tracking are now in comparison to last year:

Last Year This Year
# of books 5255 5447
Median 5 12
Mean 144 310
Top User in Common 390 413
100th User in Common 78 197 (157 is last user's raw score listed)
Publication Date 1975 1975

% Unshared 21.9 19
Book 10% from bottom 1 1
Book 10% from top 333 494
Title Trout Fishing in America Cultural Literacy

# Users with Here I Stand 293 565

Most of the changes in rates comes from the addition of new users to Library Thing. The 200 or so books we've added in the past year probably did little to change the overall rates on their own.

John

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 9:44 pm (EST) Mar 31, 2008

I teach advanced comp in the natural sciences and my husband has a science degree is a great reader so we have a small science library too.

Ellen

Lähettänyt: ellenandjim 7:59 pm (EST) Aug 6, 2007

Hi!

I realised later I linked to a different thread than the one I intended, but as long as you found it informative...

As for the reciprocal affinities, which may or may not be symmetrical, it helps to think of libraries as modular (at least all those sufficiently large and diverse in subject matter). If you see symmetrical (high) affinity in a given pair (both libraries appear equally high up on each other's lists), it means the libraries share more than one "module", or have a significantly high number of less-common works in common. Otoh, if one library (A) appears high on list B, but B is much lower on list A (or not at all), then I think this means that one part (or all of it, depending on library size/diversity) of library A is of high interest to B, but B's library is of comparatively low interest to A. For a real-life example, there's a list where mine appears very high, whereas that library doesn't appear on mine at all. Now, because that rather large library is overwhelmingly crafts-and-arts (and I have very few books of the sort), the subset of the books that we share (literature, quite a few uncommon titles) is far more representative of my library than that person's. In other words, they exhibit SOME interest in the sort of books I overwhelmingly collect, so I appear on their list (and high up probably because, as I said, many titles that we share are uncommonly held) whereas I don't exhibit sufficient interest in THEIR library's predominant fare for them to register on my list.

I hope this wasn't utterly confusing... :)

Because a large part of my library is "obscure", especially books in languages other than English, I very rarely appear on people's lists, especially very high up. I seem to intersect most on literature and science fiction...

Lähettänyt: LolaWalser 1:35 pm (EST) Jul 19, 2007

Hello!

Yes, I think I was the loudest complainer when the UWYB lists disappeared--and in several threads--but eventually others joined in, making me look less of an oddball... I hope. :)

I too absolutely NEED that feature in order to enjoy and use LT properly.

Here's a link to one of the discussions (the main one, I think) about the version of shared books appearing on profile views.

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.ph...

Lähettänyt: LolaWalser 11:35 am (EST) Jul 17, 2007

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of our joining Library Thing. It's been lots of fun.

Alas, we've been bumped out of the top 50 libraries for now. We've got 5255 books, which puts us in 58th place according to Zeitgeist.

Our obscurity scores are now median of 5 and mean of 144. I blame the rapid growth of the mean on our Harry Potters. Roland Bainton's Here I Stand now has 293 Library Thing Owners.

Since we're now at our anniversary, I thought I would be a bit more explicit about the other libraries I've been following in depth. I joined the Too Obscure group and should probably post this there -- but since I've started all this ruminating here, I'll continue for a while.

I first learned about Library Thing from an entry at the blog Crooked Timber. I noticed other users who I could identify as associated with blogs and began to note which ones tended to cluster as most similar libraries with others. I began to note the total number of books in the library, the median and mean obscurity score, the average date of publication, and the raw totals of the first and last entry of the users with their books. In addition, I kept a roster of which of the selected users turned up in the top 100 of weighted books in common. Unfortunately, these things change frequently and take a fair amount of mindless effort to keep up. But I've put some of the information on a spread sheet as a snapshot at specific moments.

My research group has three subgroups: 12 academic bloggers I recognize from the blogosphere: chrisbertram, chrisbrooke, kieranhealey, jtlevy, TimothyBurke, mcmoran, joshcherniss, sdarwall, cshalizi, williamdorr, meburst, and ranaverde. 12 self-identified academics who I do not recognize from blogging (though one or two turn out to have blogs): ellenandjim, markell, sylphette, jgarrig, michaelbancroft, geoffmiles, pobanion, alexthehunn, abvr, jaybernstein, fledgist, and alex19. And 5 big libraries that have lots of books in common with us and seem very academic, but do not identify themselves as academics: bibliophiles, pomonomo2003, lycanthropist, debweiss, and jfclark.

Ten of these libraries were on my list of the weighted users with my books: bibliophiles, ellenandjim, pomonomo, lycanthropist, debweiss, jfclark, michaelbancroft, alex19, jgarrig, and mcmoran. jgarrig and mcmoran have fewer than 1000 books, but the rest are all pretty large.

Of the twenty, the one that stands out most for obscurity is lycanthropist. In January, his stats were:
Total Books 7152, Median obscurity 2, Mean obscurity 24, average publication date 1970, Top user in common 390, Bottom of top 100 users in common 78.

By contrast, the one that is least obscure of the twenty is sylphette. Her stats were:
1847, 64, 347, 1997, 505, and 188.

In this peer group our total number is fairly high, our median low, our mean near the middle, or average date of publication low, and the top and bottom of our top 100 users near the middle.

Among the interesting tidbits I noticed in researching this is that ellenandjim and meburste now have more than 1000 books in common. Pretty impressive!

With that, I'll relaxedly celebrate our anniversary here at LT. And eventually we'll get back to the 1000 or so books we still need to enter to get us back to the 50 largest libraries.

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 10:18 pm (EST) Mar 29, 2007

An landmark has been passed for Library Thing as a whole. The top fifty libraries now all have more than 5000 books. We're still in, but I don't know how much longer it will last. But even if we bow out temporarily, we've got enough left to enter that we'll get back in eventually

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 9:42 pm (EST) Jan 25, 2007

Happy New Year!

We've come to another moment to take stock. We're now past the 5000 mark -- 5228 to be exact -- which finally gets us into the top fifty libraries. We're also in the top fifty taggers. We're not done yet, but the areas we have left may take a while to enter.

In the meantime, here are where we stand with our stats.

Our current median and mean are 4 and 105. The average date of publication is now 1975.

The top three users with our book in weighted average are bibliophiles, RonKaplanNJ, and amboles. Our top three in raw total are ellenandjim, debweiss, and eromsted with 377, 336, and 329 books in common, respectively. The 100th library in raw total now has 136 books in common.

The weighted average libraries are an interesting mix. Bibliophiles has been one of our closest matches from the very beginning. RonKaplanNJ and amboles make it to the list because of very heavy concentrations on one aspect of our collection. RonKaplanNJ has an abundance of baseball books which connect with our collection. Amboles has a bunch of Tintins and Asterixes. The next few entries also range widely. They include ellenandjim, but also aprille, which rises so high on the basis of lots of childrens books. It's an interesting assortment.

I'll get back to relationships between user libraries in a subsequent post.

And to return to another running theme, Bainton's Here I Stand has grown to 209 copies in library thing. Here's the development:

April: 55
May: 60
July: 100
October: 144
January: 209

That's it for now.

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 10:55 pm (EST) Jan 2, 2007

So, after entering Harry Potters and Lord of the Rings, our library's mean obscurity went from 65 to 79.

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 7:27 pm (EST) Oct 23, 2006

Another milestone reached. We're now at 4002 books. At this point my uncertainty about reaching the top fifty libraries seems kind of silly, because we must have at least another 1500 books to go. I'm in the midst of entering our childrens books currently in the family room and basement. There are still the books in our kids rooms plus the books in Lisa's office, an abundance of travel guides, cookbooks, and a few other random books. And then I can decide whether to include the sheet music, which we also have in quantity.

I've deliberately held off on entering Harry Potters until now. I'm going to enter them next to check the impact on my library obscurity.

In the meantime, here's an update on stats I've been following:

Current median and mean: 3/65. I underestimated the effects of new users on the median obscurity. It's not just that a higher proportion of my recent entries have had multiple users, but some of the old entries also got cancelled out by newer entries of others.

The averages seem fairly consistent for similar types of libraries. Ellenandjim, for instance are 5/78, meburste is 4/74.

I'd say about 35% of our books are not shared by anyone.

The top three shared libraries are now ellenandjim (333) eromsted (275) and debweiss (275). Former leaders bibliophiles are now fifth at 230 and meburste is now ninth at 208. Our top 100 matches conveniently go down to 100 books shared. Several standbys from earlier to 100s have dropped out. No more pobanion, jgarrig, TimothyBurke, or chrisbrooke. Lycanthropist and pomonomo2003 have drifted down to middle of the pack.

Of course, now the profile page lists the weighted similar libraries as default rather than the raw number. The top three weighted are bibliophiles, alex19, and ellenandjim. I don't quite understand how the weighted scores are determined. Some things about it are curious. For example, alex19 is our second closest match, but we are not one of his top 100 matches. We're in the middle of the pack of matches for bibliphiles and ellenandjim.

Less striking, but also notable is how far down the list we are on raw score for our top matches. We are about 50th on ellenandjim's list, about 70th on eromsted's and about 85th on debweiss's.

So virtually all of the peer group I identified before has fallen out of my top list of shared raw numbers and many are not in my list of weighted. The weighted list nevertheless more closely resembles the original list of similar libraries.

Oh, and Bainton's Here I Stand now has 144 entries in Library Thing.

Another number in fun statistics that has started to interest me is the average date of publication of the books. Ours is 1971, which seems to be in a common band for academicish libraries with a lot of older books. Meburste is 1975, lycanthropist 1970, ellenandjim 1971, bibliophiles 1977. The oldest library I've noted is languagehat, 1963, though I think that is because the books are entered by original date of publication rather than the given edition's date of publication.

I'll be back shortly after I've added Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and a couple of other very popular books to note their impact.

John

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 10:25 pm (EST) Oct 21, 2006

John --

I left academia five years ago, and at that point I had to make a decision about my books. I chose to keep key works in linguistics - as I am sometimes still asked to be an expert witness in language discrimination cases. I had maybe sixty or seventy books on German speaking Europe, history, culture, etc etc. Eventually I donated all of them to a small private school for a fundraising auction. I only kept a couple, as I was sure then (and have not changed my mind) that I would not be pursuing the subject area any further.

As you've seen, I've been writing fiction full time since I left academia (where I was firmly ensconed for twelve years as an assistant and then a tenured associate professor). It was a good decision, in retrospct.

rosina

Lähettänyt: greenery 4:19 pm (EST) Sep 9, 2006

So, we are now past 3000 books. When we first started with LT, that would have been enough to get us on the list of top 50 libraries. Now it is enough to get us into the top 100, but we would need to break 4000 to be in the top 50. I still think there is a chance we can make it. I'm sure we have at least 1000 more books to go, especially if we add the books in Lisa's office.

To pick up some earlier themes. ellenandjim now has the most volumes in common at 231. Bibliophiles is second at 193. Our median and mean obscurity are now 2 and 38 respectively. The mean puts us near the norm for general academic libraries. The median is still comparatively low. I am reasonably confident we'll keep it at 2 until all of our books are entered. The 100 most similar libraries now go to 54 books in common.

The books we have yet to enter fall into a few big categories. In addition to Lisa's office and the books in our children's rooms we have an extensive collection of travel guides, poetry and drama, and paperback fiction.

When I first started observing similarity scores I thought that academic libraries would dominate the most similar list by now. But in fact, the apparent academicness of the most similar libraries has declined since the first 500 or so entries. I have identified twelve libraries from academics at one or two degrees of remove from the Crooked Timber blog. Only three, meburste, chrisbrooke, and TimothyBurke are now in my top 100 list. There are twelve other libraries I can identify with certainty as academics. Seven of them remain in my top 100 list, including the two grad students whose libraries came out as most similar in the earliest stages of entry: pobanion and AlextheHunn. Nine of the 24 libraries belong to historians. I note that the strongest clustering effects seem to be around intellectual history/political theory/philosophy. Someone like jcherniss has an unusually large concentration of the 24 libraries.

John

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 9:17 pm (EST) Sep 7, 2006

John,

Just bought Wedgwood's Thirty Years War. Thanks for the recommendation.

alibrarian

Lähettänyt: alibrarian 12:37 pm (EST) Aug 7, 2006

john of .. Obscurity interests me since I am so used to people having strange looks on their faces when they see the books I am reading (including my family). It's nice to know that some people are out there reading the same titles. But I'm still suprised that over 100 of my titles (10%) are not yet held by other LTers. I should have been more specific about the 17th century (which I have changed in the description). It is a bit limited to British and American history. Particularly to the British Civil War and the English Republic. With that comes an interest in the rise of Puritanism and Quakerism. On the American side, I'm interested in the founding years of the American colonies which leads to a sub-interest in Pennsylvania history. I have only little about the continental 17th century or that period of German history. But I would like to learn more about the Thirty Years' War. I'm close to finishing entering my collection. I think there's only another 200 or so books floating around the house in odd places.

Lähettänyt: alibrarian 11:32 am (EST) Jul 30, 2006

We've just past the 2000 mark. Here are some observations:

We've now got a median obscurity of 2 and a mean of 19. The mean has grown substantially in the last couple of days as I have started adding classic fiction we have in hardbound. I expect the mean to keep going up for a while. I could probably drive the median back down to one for a while, because we still have several pockets of obscure books, but I can't see that I'll be able to keep it there. On the other hand, I'll be surprised if our median obscurity goes up to 3.

Roland Bainton's Here I Stand has grown to 100 users (from 60 in April).

Bibliophiles remains the user with the most books in common at 124. ellenandjim and meburste remain second and third. The stability of their positions is pretty remarkable. There are now fifteen users with at least 50 books in common with us. Of those, only 5 (bibliophiles, pomonomo2003, lycanthropist, jgarrig, and pobanion) have us as one of the 100 users with the most books in common with them. I find that also pretty remarkable and wonder if that kind of pattern is common. Library size cannot be the only explanation for the imbalance, since two of the libraries closest in size do not include us amongst their top 100, while one that does is quite a bit bigger than us.

I've identified a group of about twenty libraries owned by academics in the humanities and social sciences which I am going to start following in more depth going forward.

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 8:52 pm (EST) Jul 29, 2006

We're at the 1400 mark and it's time to take stock again. We've now finished with our "working collection" in the study. We could go many directions from here. We have not yet cataloged the working collection in Lisa's office at work. Nor have we tackled the lion's share of the classic texts that we often assign in intro classes (e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, Rousseau). I'm sure when we tackle those our mean obscurity number will shoot up. Another direction we could go is to start on our art history collection, which is strongly oriented towards our research specialties.

Our obscurity ratings still are at median 1, mean 4. The most popular book we've cataloged so far is Erik Larsen's. At the top of our shared books list is bibliophiles, who has just crossed the three digit mark at 101. Second is Ellenandjim at 79 and Meburste at 59. Academics with an inclination for history clearly dominate the list.

I'll get back to entering books in a month or so. For now, real world work is interfering.

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 9:27 pm (EST) Jun 6, 2006

So I have now passed the 1000 mark. My library obscurity numbers have not moved much. Goethe's Faust pushed the mean up to 3. The median remains at 1. Bibliophiles retains the title of the most titles in common, now with 84. I still have a little ways to go with our working library in the study. The remaining titles are in U.S. and British history, so the median may make it up to 2 by the time I'm done here. The mean may also move up a notch, but most of my standard primary texts are downstairs, so I won't have large leaps from works like The Prince or Candide.

I think I've got more than 3000 books in all, but the horizon is receding fast enough that I'm not sure I'll make it to the top 50 largest libraries list.

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 8:37 pm (EST) May 30, 2006

Richard's comment prompts me to note that of the more than 100 foreign language books I have cataloged so far, at least six are shared by another user. And they are mostly obscure ones like the Grotefend. Interesting.

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 9:11 pm (EST) May 7, 2006

Ahh, finally someone I'm sharing the Grotefend with!

Lähettänyt: richard 5:50 am (EST) May 3, 2006

My thanks to Tim for stopping by and leaving a comment. Perhaps he gets a ping when a library reaches the 500 mark. That's what's happened with us. Time to take stock of where we are so far...

The library obscurity widget changed a little while I've been adding things. Now it distinguishes between mean and median obscurity. My median is holding steady at 1 and should stay there for a while. My mean shot up to 2 when I added Bainton's Here I Stand and Diarmaid MacCulloch's Reformation in rapid succession. I don't imagine I'll ever get it back to 1 again. It seems to be holding fairly steady at 2 for now, even though I've added a few books that are about as popular as MacCulloch's. It's been interesting watching Here I Stand grow since I first entered it. At first it was shared by 55 libraries; it's now in 60.

I have no idea how many books we have total in our collection. I now feel pretty confident we'll make it onto the largest libaries list if we put everything in, even though that's a receding horizon. I have yet to finish all of my books in early modern Europe, much less my modern history and non-European history.

I've enjoyed playing with the various lists of shared books. At the moment, the person who shares the most books in common is bibliophiles (with 28 right now). The person with the most shared books has changed every so often (for a while it was pobanion, who describes himself as an early modern historian, so the overlap was no surprise), but bibliophiles has a pretty solid lead now. I think the top spot is only likely to change when I start moving in a different direction in the collection -- and perhaps not even then.

I thought that the large number of foreign language books in my collection would give me an especially large cushion of unique titles. But I have discovered that Library Thing has an international user base. Several of my German titles are shared by users in Europe.

I've been using what I call the "Crooked Timber Gang" as my touchstone for comparisons on things like library obscurity. The gang is users I can identify as academics from blogs like CT, many at one or two degrees of separation. I notice a number of them amongst the shared books list already. I also think I've found at least one user I know in real life.

So it's been fun so far playing with the widgets. I'll update periodically when new fun things happen.

Next on my list to add are modern German history, general early modern European history, intellectual history, and military history.

John

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 7:54 pm (EST) Apr 15, 2006

So we've just broken the 100 mark in cataloging.

I've started with my working collection. It allows us to have some fun with the various widgets of Library Thing. My strategy of cataloging is to make entries directly from my bookshelves, but with an eye to keeping my library obscurity number as low as possible for as long as possible (it's at 1 for the first 100 books). So far, that hasn't required any special finagling because I know that my research specialty is an obscure one. My most widely held book so far is held by six other users. And no one holds more than one book in common among my first 100. From a quick scan of other people's lists, I think I can keep my number down to one or two until I start cataloging my British stuff. And by then I should have built up a pretty big cushion.

I'll save my Harry Potters for last.

John

Lähettänyt: johnandlisa 12:40 pm (EST) Apr 2, 2006