Ben's comments (member since Dec 09, 2008)

Ben's comments from the Goodreads Librarians group.

Kasia wrote: "But it's probably going to be a recurring issue (with people entering and importing LeGuin)."

I don't care about having to catch and merge imports so much as people intentionally changing the name back and forth either way. To that end, I've added a librarian note to her profile linking to this topic. Now if someone like me wanders along and begins wondering if it should be "Le Guin" or "LeGuin" they have some sort of reference.

Thanks for doing all the merging!

Looking at the edit history, it seems that Ursula K. Le Guin's author profile has been vacillating between "Le Guin" and "LeGuin" as her last name. It's currently at "LeGuin" and there's a ghost "Le Guin" profile.

Her name is properly "Le Guin", with the space. Ordinarily I'd just correct the profile. However, since it's been going back and forth, I want to see if there's some sort of consensus, fix it (if it needs to be fixed) and add a librarian note so it stays that way.

There being no sort field for author names, am I correct in assuming that changing her name to "Le Guin" will make the system sort her under G? Is this technical limitation a sufficient reason to keep her listed as "LeGuin"?

(1) Stephen Moore - Economics
(2) Stephen Moore - Actor
(3) Stephen Moore - Biographies
(4) Stephen Moore - Illustrator
(5) Stephen Moore - Fantasy
(6) Stephen Moore - Physician
(7) Stephen Moore - Sociology

And, of course, we can't forget the Stevens!

(1) Steven Moore - Literary criticism
(2) Steven Moore - Pottery

All this just because I wanted the proper narrator on an audiobook I own. . . .

rivka wrote: "I actually have some more detailed thoughts about librarian levels..."

I agree that if we're going to start implementing levels, we should do it in a detailed, consistent manner from the start to avoid any confusion in the future.

Wikipedia has a couple of levels of locking, the most common of which is the "locked to anonymous editors" setting (which obviously doesn't apply in this case). If a page has been locked such that only an administrator can edit it, changes are suggested and discussed on the article's talk page.

To that end, we should to make comment areas for books/authors more prominent to librarians. I know that both have comment fields, but those are stuck at the bottom of their edit pages. Similarly, some authors will have topics in this group where several of us have collaborated, but a librarian who isn't active in this group may remain ignorant of the topic. Let's give authors "librarian talk" pages or integrate them with topics in this group in a more noticeable way. This may prod some well-meaning librarians, who, for some reason or another, have never become involved in the discussion or sensitive to the nuances, to think before combining. I'm all in favour of technical restrictions to combat those who are just blind to librarian notes.

Charles Stross wrote two books in a series: Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. Few editions on Goodreads have any series information associated with them; those that do identify it as the "Singularity Sky series." Wikipedia calls it the Eschaton series, but that risks confusion with Frederik Pohl's Eschaton trilogy. Stross' official site doesn't list these books as belonging to any particular series.

I haven't been able to find anything that implies Stross has more books planned in this series, at least for now. In view of that, I'm inclined not to treat these books as part of a series at all; Iron Sunrise is merely a sequel to Singularity Sky. But I wanted to get some other thoughts on this. Do you agree? Or is it more appropriate to identify these books as part of either the "Singularity Sky" series or the "Eschaton" series?

I'm probably the one who uploaded the LibriVox covers you've mentioned. What I try to do for such editions is find some sort of public domain cover image—for instance, with the LibriVox edition of Areopagitica, I took the cover page of the 1644 edition from Wikipedia. I prefer some sort of cover to no cover. However, using only the project's logo is confusing, because it leads to multiple, unrelated books having an identical cover that has no distinguishing information on it.

A quick look around the Project Gutenberg website doesn't yield any definitive answer as to whether or not one can use its logo in this context. LibriVox has a big page of promotional material, so I grabbed something from there. Promotional banners for Project Gutenberg exist as well. I'd err on the side of caution and contact them before using their actual logo, unless someone else can shed further light on the question.

I'm inclined to keep the pseudonym, if that's the name under which the books are published, and link to the respective brothers' profiles in the pseudonym's profile. It's like The Brothers Grimm, though now that I mention it, I notice that there are plenty of works, like Grimm's Fairy Tales that attribute the brothers as separate authors....

Merged and combined. :)

Would it be possible to carry selected books over to another page? That is, say you select two books to combine on the first page and then go to the second page. Those two books will appear (maybe in a different coloured box) at the top of the second page, still checked. Then you could continue checking books on the second page that you'd like to combine with these previously selected books.

Adna wrote: "I was wondering about this. Would citing Wikipedia be a good way to go or should we do much more research on the author before we post any information - by rewriting it (in our words)? "

Wikipedia articles often have citations and links to other sources--including the author's website and maybe interviews with the author. So I always start with Wikipedia, if only because it's a time saver. I also find that Wikipedia can have pertinent details omitted on the author's site (such as birthday).

I work on the Rule of Inverse Reliability: the more famous a person is, the less reliable his or her Wikipedia biography will be. This my seem counter-intuitive, because famous authors have more sources of information about them than a newly-minted author with a single book, right? However, more sources often means more potential for contradictory information. Also, famous people's pages tend to attract more vandalism than less popular pages.

It's also a matter of choice. If you love writing author biographies and want to do more thorough research, then I'm not going to stop you. That's great: dig deeper! On the other hand, if you're just interested in filling empty bio spaces, Wikipedia and the author's site will suffice in most cases.

And if you're ever in doubt, you can always post a topic here asking for a second opinion.

Do we have a topic where we can post links to reliable sources of information about authors? I mean more general sites than an author's own official one. For example, the Victorian Web and its sister site the Postcolonial Web have oodles (yes, that's a scientific term) of biographical information, provided by academics from around the world, about authors from those respective periods.

JG wrote: "The easiest way to get a specific edition through the "add book/author" tool is by entering the isbn instead of the book's title."

Wow, it has honestly never occurred to me to do that before. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious. Thanks for the tip.

Lindig wrote: "What I really need to know is how to put links into a reply to Cait's message..."

Ah! Well just above the comment field, there's a link that says "add book/author". That brings up a tool that you can use to search for books and link to a specific edition.

If you have trouble finding the specific edition though (the tool can be cumbersome at times), you can just paste the URL to the edition's page into the comment field and it'll be turned into a link, like so:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42128...

When you're editing an edition of a book, you'll see a link that says "add a librarian note" immediately above the Title field. Click the link to open up a field where you can add your note. This note will appear on the author's combine page.

So for example, you could say, "Contains different stories than <link to the other book here>. Do not combine these two editions."

I combined each of those three books to which you've linked, Michelle. But a super-librarian will have to delete the duplicate editions.

And no worries about finding all the books! That's what librarians are here for ... we like to organize things. Incidentally, there's a dedicated topic for deleting books.

David wrote: "While "Audiobook" would be acceptable, based on the conversation above, I'm not sure it's descriptive enough. Most people I know refer any recording of a book, physical media or otherwise, as an au..."
On the other hand, it's possible that a site could offer a particular edition of a book as both a download or as a shipped physical CD. In that case, neither "Audio CD" nor "Audio Download" accurately describes the edition in question.

I'm not against "Audio Download" though; you make a good point. But "Audiobook" might be a good default, and then librarians may feel free to specify that an edition is an "Audio Download" when it is available as such.

I've decided to listen to audiobooks this summer when I bike to and from work, and I'm getting them all from public domain audiobook provider LibriVox. They offer the audiobooks as downloads, in either MP3 or Ogg format. Yesterday I added the Librivox Edition of Areopagitica, and at first I put the binding as "Audiobook", because it wasn't a physical CD, so this seemed sensible. Then I saw this topic, so I change it to "LibriVox Audio".

In the interests of being consistent, however, I think "Audiobook" is a far more appropriate binding. It applies to a larger category of books. People can still label books with physical CDs as "Audio CD" or "MP3 CD", much like some distinguish between "Paperback" and "Trade Paperback"; "Audiobook" will be a convenient default.

The "change comments" are actually new and designed to summarize what you edited.

"Librarian comments" show up when a librarian is editing the same book.

"Librarian notes", what JG recommended adding, will show up on the combine page. There's a link to add a note right above the title field on the book's edit page.

You can get to the librarian manual from the help page accessible at the bottom of every page on the site. It's got a wealth of information, so start by reading that.

Then, if you've any other immediate questions, search this group or post a topic. We're happy to help. If you come across something and you're unsure what to do, ask for a second opinion. That's why we're here.

Well that, and also because we all have great hair and dazzling personalities.... You'll be receiving your spa pass by carrier pigeon soon.

Alt codes may also have come in handy. Alt+0233 creates é.

I noticed that the bio for Anne Perry was taken straight from Wikipedia. According to the edit log, Jimbo (not to be confused with that Jimbo) is the librarian responsible, and he's updated numerous other author profiles with bios from Wikipedia.

Obviously this is just a case of trying to improve authors' profiles. Unfortunately, since Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL, any subsequent reproduction of a Wikipedia article must also be licensed under the GFDL. In some cases the amount of the article copied might possibly fall under fair use. With some authors, like Anne Perry, pretty much the entire article's been copied.

If I have time later, I'll go through the profiles and see if I can make the bios more concise (a quality that Wikipedia articles, quite rightly, are not), but I wanted to draw attention to this.