AbeBooks is mining data from LibraryThing.com to power its new BookHints recommendation system. LibraryThing is a social-networking and book-cataloging site for bibliophiles recently profiled in the New York Times. AbeBooks has a 40 percent stake in the service, giving it access to unique data about books created by LibraryThing's worldwide community of more than 155,000 readers.

At LibraryThing, more than 10 million books from the personal libraries of booklovers have been cataloged, tagged (a short but personal descriptive term rather than traditional library or bookstore classification) and rated. This data powers the BookHints system now found on AbeBooks.com and AbeBooks.co.uk.

BookHints currently creates recommendations for 10 per cent of AbeBooks' 100 million listings. Designed specifically for people who want to browse for their next read, BookHints generates recommendations based upon titles found on the bookshelves of like-minded readers who also own the book originally sought.

After clicking on an AbeBooks listing that has been matched to LibraryThing data, the visitor sees from three to six recommendations beneath the original listing depending on how many LibraryThing members own the book. BookHints only displays two further titles by the author of the book first searched for to ensure a diverse set of suggestions.

The number of possible recommendations will increase as more information from LibraryThing is added during 2007. Currently, only books with ISBNs are incorporated into the system.

"BookHints is a real break-through in bookselling. It's the first time that unique information created by an online community has been directly applied to retailing," said Boris Wertz, COO of AbeBooks.com. "BookHints is based upon the libraries of true bibliophiles so our visitors, who are also heavy readers, will see very useful recommendations. We're simply showing what like-minded people own and read but it took the emergence of LibraryThing and social networking to finally capture this information."

http://www.abebooks.com