Dear Code4Lib-ers (and apologies for a semi-crosspost to Web4Lib):

## Request:

I'm trying to get a global view of library event systems—a part of library
technology I've never really looked at. I wonder if anyone here could give
me a leg up?

* Who are the top competitors?
* Are they local- or cloud-based?
* What sort of outputs to they present?
* Has anyone worked with this data—moving it to other calendar systems,
etc.?

Thanks for any help!

## Background:

LibraryThing has decided to expand our "LibraryThing Local" system (
http://www.librarything.com/local ), starting with our events coverage, by
scraping and other parsing. So far we're processing data from all of the
"Big Six" publishers, a bunch of smaller publishers, Barnes and Noble,
IndieBound, Waterstones, Powell's, etc. Members have also been adding
events—we've got more than 10,000 events coming up in the next few months.
This is the worst time of the year for events, so that's a lot.

But we're missing libraries, except what members have been adding. Many of
the big city libraries have fans adding all the events by hand, but it's a
drop in the bucket.

## Use your API skills for good?

If you're interested in adding your library's events to LibraryThing,
LibraryThing is giving money to charity for every event added, manually
through a new event-adding API.

See the blog post:
http://www.librarything.com/blogs/librarything/2012/11/add-events-to-librarything-local-and-give-books-to-needy-readers/

Best,
Tim Spalding
LibraryThing

-- 
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding