Editing it sounds fine to me.

Adding that notation in the description field is probably a good idea.

I mentioned this in another thread regarding book awards, but the Orange Broadband Prize was only known as the Orange Broadband Prize for one year, and is actually known as the Orange Prize for every other year. Thus, I really don't think it should be listed as the "Orange Broadband Prize" since it's really not the title of the award, bar that one year (2007-2008).

I'd much rather see it read "Orange Prize for Fiction" for all years, rather than the award reflecting that one year's title change. Does anyone agree? I'll probably send an e-mail regarding this, since I don't think anyone noticed when I posted about this in the other thread.

How about writing competitions? I'm inclined to include them in this award feature as there are some competitions in Indonesia that are prestigious and the winners are great books. But I'm wondering what everybody else thinks about this.

The latter is a good thing -- it means Amazon deleted it from their database and so we don't need to worry about it anymore.

I should have realized about the first; I'll get it.

rivka wrote: "Delete them, then re-add them (search by ISBN) and re-NAB them."
I failed both tasks. I can't delete
NOT A BOOK A Game of Thrones Collectible Card Game Starter Set Iron Throne Edition.
Only super-librarians can delete books with so many reviews
And the other ISBN was 1589943112 and I can't locate it.

Delete them, then re-add them (search by ISBN) and re-NAB them.

I was looking at the Nebula award books and two not-a-books are listed.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22641...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11910...

The book itself is listed too. I can delete these, right?

You want the GR system to work differently than it currently does. That's Feedback; the tech guys rarely read here.

rivka wrote: "No idea why it was doing that. I merged it with the existing (correct) version.

Might want to post a bug in Feedback."

Thanks.

rivka wrote: "Again, this is something for the Feedback group.

If there are 100 books each year that qualify for Notable, then I think we should be deleting that "award" altogether."

But my issue about editing the award data is a librarian question, not a feedback question.

And I disagree about the NYT Notable Book award - a lot of people look at those lists and decide what books to read/buy based on them.

Again, this is something for the Feedback group.

If there are 100 books each year that qualify for Notable, then I think we should be deleting that "award" altogether.

I hate to be a whiner, but the whole adding of awards is really clumsy. It shouldn't take a librarian 5 tries to figure out how to do it correctly. There should be a way to edit the wording of the award inside the record, without having to save one's changes, see if they showed up correctly, and when they didn't, have to go back in and re-edit. This resulted in me adding an award that came out "New York Times Notable Book for New York Times Notable Book of the Year" etc.

And "New York Times Notable Book of the Year" is not a good title for an award handed out to 100 books. The title of the award makes it sound like one book per year gets the award. It should just be "New York Times Notable Book (year)".

No idea why it was doing that. I merged it with the existing (correct) version.

Might want to post a bug in Feedback.

When I enter this award as PEN/Jacqueline Award (etc.) it keeps registering as "Pen." It's definitely supposed to be PEN.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38515...

Exactly. I'm waiting on adding anything to the manual until MICHAEL gets an auto-fill working and any other changes shake out.

Rivka's comment about the date is that the "Name of the Award" should not include the year. The award itself should include the year.

When you enter an award for a book as:

"Hugo Award for Best Novel (2009)"

the GR parser will break this into three parts:

1. "Hugo Award" - the name of the award
2. "Best Novel" - the category of the award
3. "2009" the year the award was given

Rivka is referring to things like "2009 Hugo Award for Best Novel" because in this case the name of the award will be "2009 Hugo Award"

Can we get something added to the Librarian Manual about the correct formatting of awards? And the suggestions for what's appropriate/not. For instance, I thought date of the award was supposed to be added at the end in parantheses. (But then I saw Rivka's post that said NOT to add the date.) I'm inclined to add shortlist nominees and sometimes even longlist when I have the time/interest. Some awards have categories such as Gold, Silver, Bronze. I appreciate having the award field searchable. Thanks! NOTE: Just read the post from "some Michael" about awards, but it's in a different category??? Anyway, glad it's being discussed.

Ok. :)

~nods~ understand that...just mainly trying to get the name listed correctly etc. :)

Years should not appear in the name of the award at all.

Minor concern about one award listed. This goes along with the runner-ups discussion, I think. For the Texas Bluebonnet award, there's 1 listing as follows: "A 2009-2010 Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List Title" That could get confusing if/when more are added. What about editing it to say "Texas Bluebonnet Award Nominee 2009-2010" (if it was a winner, it'd be 2009 Texas Bluebonnet Award Winner, or something like that; going by their web site)

You're probably right. It'd be nice to link them formally, but it would require finer control over the way the award names are generated.

I think they need to stay separate.

(Another example: Newberry Medal/Honor)

Does anyone have an opinion on the best way to signify awards which give official runner-up awards (as opposed to just nominations)? For example, the Caldecott Medal is given to the best American picture book each year. The Caldecott Honor is officially given to noteworthy runner-ups.

Currently these are listed as separate awards. Would it make sense to combine them into a single award, and if so, how?

The only other similar case I can think of the CWA Gold Dagger/Silver Dagger Awards (the silver daggers are given to runner-ups), but there are probably others.

Yes, I deleted the award "Winner" from a book - looks like when someone added the text to the Awards box originally, they prefaced all the awards with the term "Winner", which then got imported into the new Awards as it's own - weird, but understandable. = )

vicki_girl wrote: "The strangest (to me) are the ones where Characters or Genre Categories have been put into the awards field."

Definitely among the odder ones. Some of the oddnesses also came from the transfer process, which interpreted almost all commas and "and"s as breaks between awards, and "for"s as a break between the award name and the category.

Some of the awards stuff is bizarre enough in form, that I wonder if some of it actually comes from the Amazon import, which would partially explain how the wrong info ends up there. In other cases, it's undoubtedly librarian error (accidentally typing in the wrong field).

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "I'm actually finding scrolling through the awards list rather fascinating. There is some really weird stuff in there (and not just due to alternate entries). "

Same here. The strangest (to me) are the ones where Characters or Genre Categories have been put into the awards field.:S

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "When we reach that point the issue would be solved since the short story would exist as its own object."

A very good point!

That is the primary argument for allowing it. Of course, if just attached to an anthology, there is no way for the short story fan to know *which* story actually got the award. And as the story is published in more and more anthologies, more and more anthologies will get listed for the same exact award.

GoodReads is starting to move in the direction of allowing short stories as their own entries (due to eBooks and such). When we reach that point the issue would be solved since the short story would exist as its own object.

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "A similar situation comes up for awards given to best short stories and (often) novellas. These are often attached to short story collections which contain the winning story. When the award is for a subset of the work, I would lean against listing it (this is independent of awards given to actual collections)."

That would make those awards basically unlisted, though, which rather defeats the purpose of them for short story fans....

Carolyn, I agree. I think there are cases which will require discussion, but for the most part I think we'll find ourselves in reasonable agreement.

I'm actually finding scrolling through the awards list rather fascinating. There is some really weird stuff in there (and not just due to alternate entries).

Cait wrote: "Well, I guess the real question is not about this particular listing but about what the "award" field really means. What is going to constitute an award? Are we going by a strict "a notable book ..."

I'm glad to see this question here - I posted something similar in the original thread on the new awards classification.

My opinion is that anything that is just a list - best books of the year, 100 top books, most banned books, best selling books, etc. should not be considered an Award, with a capital A.

Perhaps there's a way to create a Listopia list for those items and both a) lock the list from changes, and b) show the list on the book's page - but not in the Awards field.

Ok, so now I'm probably up to $.10 = )

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "I lean toward only attaching the award to the original publication and not the collection (for both clarity and neatness)."

I agree with this as well.

I think when the award is for a subset of the work, it should be in the description field for the work, not as an award on the work.

On the flip side, I don't think that an award for an entire work should be listed for each of the parts when the original is split into 3-4 parts for foreign publication. I think this is another place where the description field for the work would be the better place to add the note.

Just my $.02

A similar situation comes up for awards given to best short stories and (often) novellas. These are often attached to short story collections which contain the winning story. When the award is for a subset of the work, I would lean against listing it (this is independent of awards given to actual collections).

Of course, there is an issue on the flip side. What do we do when awards are given to a novel which is published in parts in another country? For example George R.R. Martin's massive Song of Ice and Fire books have been nominated for numerous awards and won a couple as well. Most of these books have been split into 3-4 parts for foreign publication. Should each part be given the award? It seems to be logically correct, but it will really clutter of the awards list.

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "I lean toward only attaching the award to the original publication and not the collection (for both clarity and neatness)."

I also agree with this (unless, perhaps, it's an anthology specifically for short story or essay award-winners?).

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For wrote: "I lean toward only attaching the award to the original publication and not the collection (for both clarity and neatness)."

I agree entirely.

I've started going through the Nebula list to clean it up, and one thing I noticed is that there are some omnibus editions which have the awards attached to them when the award was given to one of the books in the collection. What do people think of this?

I lean toward only attaching the award to the original publication and not the collection (for both clarity and neatness).

vicki_girl wrote: "I've deleted some of these. However, I was going on the fact that the field is defined "literary awards". I'll stop until we get some concensus. "

I generally don't add awards info, but I have added some like that because fictiondb offers that kind of info and I just copy and paste it over to GR. But most of the time I skip over the awards field.

Isis FG wrote: "I mean, if I look up a book here and see that Website A picked it as the best book of Genre XYZ of 2009, Site B gave it 3 Golden Stars, Site C added it to their top 100 All time books then I'm going to be much more likely to check the book out. "

I've deleted some of these. However, I was going on the fact that the field is defined "literary awards". I'll stop until we get some concensus.

FYI, if you run across an award with a *, that's me getting around the fact that the system won't let me save two awards with the same exact name.

So when changing "the beacon award" to "Beacon Award", I was forced to make it "Beacon Award *". If I ever get back to the B's, I'll combine them. Unless one of y'all gets there before me! ;)

"Notable" is fairly hard to define, especially when we start taking into account foreign organizations. So I think that's a lost cause. ;)

(See previous post re Joe's bar & Grill. ;D )

I don't really like the idea of going just with "notable organizations." There are a lot of genres, subgenres, etc that just don't get attention from the mainstream award organizations. I tend to like the field being more freeform letting people list accomplishments for a book.

I mean, if I look up a book here and see that Website A picked it as the best book of Genre XYZ of 2009, Site B gave it 3 Golden Stars, Site C added it to their top 100 All time books then I'm going to be much more likely to check the book out. Those "awards" may not be all that literary in the strictest sense, but they tell something about a book and give readers a point of reference that may help them in knowing if it is something they'll like or not.

I see no reason why one-time awards shouldn't count. Of course, people are going to give less weight to "Joe's Bar & Grill's Romance Novel of the Century Award" than to the RITA, but that's as it should be. ;)

I have mixed feelings on lists. We already HAVE lists.

Well, I guess the real question is not about this particular listing but about what the "award" field really means. What is going to constitute an award? Are we going by a strict "a notable book organization said 'We have an award to give'" definition? Does an award have to be a regular occurrence or do one-time awards count? Do we take things like the "100 best" lists as awards, and if we do, do all one hundred count as winners or only the top n? And are we going to need a new section of the librarian manual for this? ;)

I guess these are more the questions I wanted to ask! I'm not particularly concerned with the NYT Best Seller list as something other than the example before us.

While I believe that is true, it's still a measure of units sold. Movie ticket sales numbers are figured similarly -- based on estimates before actual sales numbers are in. Regardless, there's no group or individual awarding a prize.

My understanding is that best selling can be designated before even one book is sold. If enough are printed and distributed, it can be called a New York Times bestseller book. Those more in the know, feel free to correct me. I don't consider it an award.

Cait wrote: ""New York Times Best Selling Author" is treated like a lifetime title once it's been given once"

Sure, because it is to the Times' advantage (and that of the authors and publishers) to feed that -- it feeds on itself.

NY Times Notable Books are awards. Best-Selling is not.

I can see including it if the book was a #1 NYT bestseller, but not in general just because it made the list somewhere in the middle.

rivka wrote: "How is it an award? It's a measure of sales figures."

The hoopla around it is bigger than for most awards, "New York Times Best Selling Author" is treated like a lifetime title once it's been given once, and for public recognition it's probably the biggest-name list in the U.S. for adult books.

I mean, I could be convinced otherwise, but it seems like the sort of information that people are going to expect to see in the "awards" field....