The used book Web site AbeBooks recently launched a book recommendation system that draws titles from personal collections compiled on LibraryThing, a book cataloging Web site created by Tim Spalding in 2005. Whenever an AbeBooks user searches for one of the ten million books listed in the databases of both AbeBooks and LibraryThing, the new BookHints system will generate a list of three to six other books that the user might enjoy.
LibraryThing, which is partially owned by AbeBooks and currently has 155,000 users, lets people catalog, rate, and share listings of volumes in their personal libraries. AbeBooks, which was started in 1996 and calls itself the world’s largest online marketplace for books, lists over one hundred million used, rare, and out-of-print titles for sale by more than 13,500 independent booksellers.
