AquaBrowser, the world leader in visual faceted search that connects to any number of data sources, announces that customers who subscribe to the new revolutionary My Discoveries social library platform in AquaBrowser Library® can now opt to pre-populate their AquaBrowser social catalog with the depth and richness of the LibraryThing tags and recommendations.
My Discoveries is the new Social Library Experience found in AquaBrowser, by Medialab Solutions. My Discoveries gives the user space to contribute their own knowledge and opinions on library materials and services. This experience is beneficial for patrons and librarians alike; by reviewing, tagging and networking the user takes an active role in the catalog. Everyone in the community can contribute and share their knowledge through AquaBrowser. The mission of AquaBrowser is to assist the library attain its role as the epicenter and sole institution to provide and safeguard knowledge. That mission is incomplete without a truly defined web identity, one which the public relates instinctively with finding information. My Discoveries was created to take the next step: to give a role and a voice to the community, and to connect the people who create, organize and use the library's resources, inside and outside the library.
LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth. LibraryThing for Libraries also offers tagging and reviews to end users, as well as the ability to find similar books.
Over 245,000 LibraryThing members have added more than 21 million tags and 2 million ratings to almost 17 million books.
By integrating the data from LibraryThing into My Discoveries, libraries will have the richest social library content in the world to start out with. The result of this is tremendously powerful: AquaBrowser makes the most of the rich data because it is the only library search solution of its kind that fully integrates user tags into the search, the discovery and the refine elements. This means for example that user tags can be used as discovery options, and as search facets to zoom in instantly to the results your patrons need, in the language they understand.
"Our customers can now enjoy complete social library bliss: a smoothly integrated social library platform, pre-populated with the richest social library content in the world. We're very excited about leveraging the openness of the My Discoveries and LibraryThing platforms to start offering this valuable content integrated into My Discoveries. It is a great example of when modern, component-based web 2.0 platforms are mixed and mashed together, without waiting for integrated systems to catch up. It's here, right now," stated Taco Ekkel, Director of Development at Medialab Solutions.
"We've experienced strong interest in our LibraryThing for Libraries program, and this was an opportunity to do even more. By integrating the LibraryThing data, AquaBrowser's My Discoveries and the continued contributions of regular people out there we've created something really wonderful," said LibraryThing creator, Tim Spalding.
AquaBrowser is the world leader in visual faceted search that connects to any number of data sources. Its creators at Medialab Solutions focus all efforts toward creating successful searching solutions with invigorating passion to maintain all libraries as superior sources of information and knowledge. AquaBrowser can be found in libraries around the world, including over 120 library systems in the USA, libraries in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Italy and 80% of all public libraries the Netherlands. Today, nearly 2,000 library locations are serving over 60 million citizens worldwide with the visual AquaBrowser search and discovery experience. For more information about the company, access http://www.aquabrowser.com or contact us directly.
