Cambridge Information Group (CIG), a privately held investment firm and parent company to Bowker and ProQuest, recently made an equity investment in LibraryThing, an emerging provider of online book cataloging services and solutions. Under the deal, CIG has purchased a minority stake in LibraryThing and has designated Bowker as the exclusive worldwide distributor for the library marketplace of LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL), LibraryThing's flagship library product. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The addition of LTFL to Bowker and ProQuest's growing suite of offerings, including AquaBrowser Library, is projected to help librarians and their patrons embrace Web 2.0 technologies to enhance and improve the efficacy of their book search and discovery efforts.
LibraryThing is an online service and social network to help library patrons and booklovers to easily catalogue their books. LTFL is made up of the Catalog Enhancements, which includes tags, recommendations and other editions and translations, and the Reviews Enhancement, which places 250,000 reviews into library catalogues and lets patrons review books as well. Bowker will make available LTFL as a service level option within its Syndetics Solutions OPAC enrichment offerings.
