Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

The books had already been "re-saved" when I have known that: if it happens again we will post it here.

A quick update on the librarian edits scripts...they're all done! So you should see the appropriate librarian (or external source) listed next to each of the columns at the bottom of the librarian edits page. Note that I only put the librarian's name next to an edit if the value they changed the field to matched the current value EXACTLY.

(Note that this rescued quite a few books on its own in the process because you guys have made so many edits to make this the best catalog ever! :) )

I'm excited: my rescue list is down to about 16 (okay, i only have about 700 books on my shelves...but still exciting)!

Just a quick rant!! I am getting really sick and tired of being told that the book that I have a copy, a physical copy of has a "wrong" or an erroneous publication date, sigh. I then have to leave that blank, but this really should not be happening. If a person clicks on the "I have a physical copy: button, he/she should be able to put in any publication date (it now seems as though GR or whatever is not accepting the publication date displayed on people's books).

Unfortunately, Gundula, that's a limitation of how we store edition information and how the rescue form works. I do understand the frustration, though -- I had a bunch of those on books I rescued as well.

I did edit the books after rescuing to change the date, so at least the information is correct now.

rivka wrote: "Unfortunately, Gundula, that's a limitation of how we store edition information and how the rescue form works. I do understand the frustration, though -- I had a bunch of those on books I rescued a..."

I am getting a lot of German books with that issue. I guess for now I will just leave the publication date blank and then go back and fix it later (I hope I actually remember to do that, I have so many German books to check etc. that I don't really have time to go back to them at the moment). However, I am reorganising my bookshelves as I go along and hopefully will be able to remember to do this. There are also some German books I want to add to the database, but that will also have to wait until after the Amazon deadline.

One more question/observation. I am adding a lot of German books that I have in my personal bookshelves. However, I do not have a scanner, so I cannot scan in the cover images at this time (and I am not all that computer savvy). So I hope that it is alright and not too much of an issue that I am rescuing/adding these books, but not providing a cover image at this time; I really do not know how to do this yet.

Covers are definitely much lower priority than saving books. They can always be added after the deadline.

rivka wrote: "Covers are definitely much lower priority than saving books. They can always be added after the deadline."

Thanks, Rivka. It would probably take me a while to figure out how to do this and I would likely end up missing the deadline for rescuing my German books.

Not every item needs to be rescued. I've had some books that didn't required the title!

I have all sorts of boxes and things playing up - is that normal at the moment? eg button on book page to add to my books usually shows 'read, reading, to read' that has gone. Star ratings are gone. I'm also coming across Russian book descriptions on English copies - isbn 0 00 649701 2. I only have 10 to save, 5 of those I saved alternate versions that I actually had. So well done us and the computer peeps!

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Not every item needs to be rescued. I've had some books that didn't required the title!"

That just means that the title is saved because it was altered enough so that a librarian is the source. However, all other information may be from Amazon so the book still needs to be rescued.

Helen wrote: "I have all sorts of boxes and things playing up - is that normal at the moment? eg button on book page to add to my books usually shows 'read, reading, to read' that has gone. Star ratings are gone..."

Helen, are you using IE as your browser by any chance?

I am Rivka.

Jennifer E. wrote: "Yes, that's the URL. The ones I rescue go away, but the ones that remain never refresh - so I'm stuck with only the foreign language/no source books. (If I hit refresh several times in a row, I'l..."

Jennifer, can you take a look now and let me know if you are still seeing the same books all of the time? Thanks!

I also have problems with IE at the moment... can't even log out anymore and nothing happens when I click on the notification button.

As I read mostly non-english books, half of my library is concerned. Now I don't have the time to rescue my books until february, which means they'll either be deleted or merged. The thing is, I'm willing to add the correct data after the deadline expires. Did I understand it correctly that the "deleted" books will keep the GR id? In that case I'll compare said id with my exported list and search and enter the right data. No problem.

My big problem is: How will I be able to see, which of my books have been merged? The blank editions will be obvious, but I've got a lot of books in my library, which I don't own myself and where I won't notice if the edition changes. However it is really important for me, that my library contains the correct editions and I'm really not looking forward to comparing every single one of my books with my exported list to see if the isbn is still the same. Is there a possibility that I'll be able to see which of my books have been merged after the deadline expires?

Helen, It's a bug, only affecting IE users.

I'm going to log out and try firefox...

I am using IE9 and have not noticed problems, but that could be lack of user attention. ;-)

S. Bell wrote: "You know what'd be cool? And probably impossible to implement... but a way to somehow search/filter rescue-me titles by author?"

Or that it can be seen it on the combine page. I just had to look at more than 40 books of an author to find about 10 books that need to be rescued.

While rescuing books, I'm discovering that books I've added and written descriptions for are suddenly showing the default description instead? (And the default description is in a different language than both my edition and the original!!!)

Weird things are afoot!

Firefox is on and I'm not having any more probs. Although it displays in an awful font. I now have just 6 books left!

Renske wrote: "Or that it can be seen it on the combine page. I ju..."

*nods* I'd really like to help my favourite authors' books out, and some I did just click open every one and go through the editions... but then some others have an awful lot of books, which makes that idea a little daunting!

I know this has been touched before, but I don't believe anyone has gone into enough details.

I'm going to need to add a bunch of audible editions of books soon. In the past I would use the ASIN from Amazon (to help differentiate ot from other editions) and I would grab the rest of the information from Audible. I might have grabbed the cover image from Amazon or Audible 9whichever one had the highest rez image).

From what I understand, it should still be safe for me to get edition information from Audible.

Does this go for the cover image?

Is it still ok for me to use the Amazon ASIN? Audible posts neither a ISBN or ASIN on their web site.

Rivka, you mentioned that having the Audible edition qualifies like having the book and you can get the information off the edition, but this is all digital downloads. You never receive anything physical, so most information is on their web site.

The download doesn't include the book's title or author anywhere in it? Surely it does, even if only in a spoken version.

Worst case, you can add an audiobook (I wouldn't use the ASIN), with publisher Audible and the info from your download. But since they are the publisher, I'd think you'd be safe grabbing a cover image from their site.

I am right in thinking kindle editions are safe even though they are Amazon? Or should I be saving them?

Helen wrote: "I am right in thinking kindle editions are safe even though they are Amazon?"

That is my understanding.

rivka wrote: "The download doesn't include the book's title or author anywhere in it? Surely it does, even if only in a spoken version.

Worst case, you can add an audiobook (I wouldn't use the ASIN), with publi..."

Sometimes they aren't listed as the publisher. For example, many of the books I get from Audible are listed as Blackstone Audio as publisher.
Example here: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?...

Would this be problematic?

Probably. Can you find the audiobook on Blackstone's site?

As CDs but not as digital downloads.

While I care little about most things, I am somewhat anal about formats.

I'm just suggesting snagging the image from them, not changing the format of your audiobook.

Ah, I can do that. Just wanted to make sure I was following correct procedures in the future. :)

Helen wrote: "Firefox is on and I'm not having any more probs. Although it displays in an awful font. I now have just 6 books left!"

You can go into your Firefox preferences and change the font, if you want.

Random, we're still in flux a bit on procedures, but snagging a cover from the publisher should be safe regardless.

I have a question. I have just found an ebook in need of rescue. When I've looked at the details I've seen an ebook with ASIN *grrrr*. The book type has been changed from Kindle book to ebook some hours ago. Can we know if it was in need of rescue before the change? So I can know if there's a problem with Kindle ebooks or this kind of things can come back to us.

Anyway, I'm going to change again to Kindle book and I'm going to add the ebook version (two, indeed, each of them with different ISBN). The book is Pages of Sin: A Bibliophile Mystery - An eSpecial from New American Library

Marisa wrote: "Can we know if it was in need of rescue before the change?"

Yes. Look at the source and librarian log, and it's not too hard to figure out if someone used the rescue form.

Snail in Danger (Sid) wrote: "I'm hopeful that perhaps a query could be run to put books that used Google Books and other problematic sources back on the "rescue me" list."

I would think that this is something better saved for after the Amazon deadline, since Google hasn't given us a deadline, nor even noticed, yet. But I agree that it would be nice, eventually, to have a new script/page for finding and replacing data that may not have been obtained in full compliance with relevant licenses, while we have copious time to deal with it, thereby avoiding another week like this (or, worse yet, lawsuits).

rivka wrote: "Random, we're still in flux a bit on procedures, but snagging a cover from the publisher should be safe regardless."

I'm guessing its quite chaotic there at the moment. I'm probably going to be holding off on adding new editions until after the deadline (have a stack of ebooks that need adding as well as audiobooks) but I get impatient at times. I'm one of those people where if I don't do it now, I may never remember to do it in the future. :D

For the mods:

How do you feel about

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/

I ask because it I use it more than wikipedia for info about books and editions in my day-to-day life and it hasn't been included on your exclusion list.

Vivienne, they get most (all?) of their book data from Amazon, so I expect they'd be a problem.

rivka wrote: "Vivienne, they get most (all?) of their book data from Amazon, so I expect they'd be a problem."

I don' think it is quite all but they obviously get a lot from amazon.co.uk and are in bed with them for listings.

Still they will remain my best site for day-to-day listings and price comparison but not for this exercise :)

Oh, they're a great site. :)

Just not for this exercise, as you say.

Mayanka wrote: "Jennifer E. wrote: "Yes, that's the URL. The ones I rescue go away, but the ones that remain never refresh - so I'm stuck with only the foreign language/no source books. (If I hit refresh several..."

Mayanka - Just woke up (in AU) and checked it - FIXED! Yay! Thanks!

Seems to be working for me too.

Mayanka changed several things -- glad to hear it worked.

It's working for me again as well. =)

I will post this in the FAQ thread as well, but we have now finished with our imports from Ingram and ISBNdb. We will make another pass at those databases to get data besides author, title, ISBN, and ISBN-13, but all of the books in those databases should be safe at this point. It made pretty major progress, and we have high hopes for some of the imports that are still running to knock out many of the non-English works in need of rescue.

Keep in mind that we are continuing to import from other sources, and that's likely to continue throughout the week, so some of the books on your rescue lists may still get rescued from a subsequent import. But our major import is now finished. Just wanted to keep you all updated.

I found a Kindle only book that needed rescuing. It was The Order of Things by F. P. Adriani. It might be worth checking by someone more experienced than me.

It's not showing up at risk on the book page.

Sorry, rivka, forgot to say that I rescued it when I found it.

As a separate question, is it possible to search the rescue list? This is a social site, and so we tend to know those we know, so searchability of the list would be good.