Adding Book Work Flow

[Chris]

Still a relatively new gr librarian here, trying to figure out a good workflow for adding books.

Right now it looks like:

1) confirm book isn't in system
2) add book
3) re-edit to add cover
4) re-edit to add series
5) create another new book with 2nd isbn (e.g. paperback vs library binding)
6) go to author page and merge edition

If I'm adding a book that's already has a series, I can't seem to add the series to the book on the book page, rather I have to find the series page and add via that?

Am I missing a link somewhere to 'add another edition' or some other steps?

Thanks for your time. My kids seem to check out those books from the library that few people ever have....

[❂ Murder by Death]

You don't actually have to re-edit to add the cover (step 3), you can add the cover to the original "add book" page. It's just up in the upper right corner and really easy to miss. :)

[Beth]

And no, you're not missing something...you have to do it through the series page.

6) Matter of symantics, here, but you're combining the editions (but yes, you are correct, you do this)...when we talk of "merging" here, it involves deleting a duplicate, or a placeholder (because the reviews are "merged" into another edition).

Symantics, but should make things less confusing for you on the forums...

[Krystal109]

Here's my wrokflow:

1) Enter ISBN to check that it's not in the system
2) If the ISBN doesn't come up I click manually add
3) Enter all the info I have, except original publication title and date. You can enter the image here too.
4) Combine with other editions, this usually will automatically add it to the series.
5) Create/Add a new series if it isn't in one.

If I have other editions, I will add the new edition before the combine step.

[Peer]

How do I add cover? Do I have to scan book, save in some format or upload to a photo sharing site?

[Beth]

You can save the image from a scan of the actual book, or from a non-bookseller website, such as the publisher's or author's website. You can add it directly from your computer. .jpg and .gif both work. On the edit page, you'll see upper right the "add image" portion. You'll choose the image by clicking on the button and choosing it from your computer files, and then either "save changes" at the bottom of the page, or "upload photo." Either will do it.

[Peer]

Thanks Beth
I'll scan some covers tomorrow
Is there a specific size in pixels?
It's not a problem to re-size, just handy to know

[Chris]

Thanks for the replies. I thought I had tried to add the cover during one and it lost my changes -- maybe it was something else.

Good to know between 'combine' and 'merge', I remember seeing that in another post when I was searching and didn't make the distinction.

I was going to be keen and add 4 other books in the series I had found were missing but maybe I'll wait until we actually read them to do the work ;-)

That and pop over to the suggestions forum and say give me a quick add for other isbns of same book :-D

[Yossarian]

Peer wrote: "Is there a specific size in pixels?
It's not a problem to re-size, just handy to know"

On the little "some HTML is okay" thing they specify "Width must be 0-400, Height must be 0-1000" I don't think covers are in the same "must be" as they're referring to there, however they should be, otherwise the file size may be large and slow things down. I'd personally suggest not making them larger than 600-700px in height, as bigger than that just is not needed.

[lafon حمزة]

Theoretically the images can be as large as you want, as the system re-sizes them anyway. However in practice I would recommend that the files not be larger than 1 MB due to the fact that although the system changes the height/width the file size stays the same. So for devices with a low time-out range (mobile devices and what-not) or people on a slower connection, this could mean the page would take a long time to load or potentially not being able to view the image at all.

[Chris]

lafon حمزة wrote: "...although the system changes the height/width the file size stays the same..."

I don't believe this to be accurate lafon. The files are resized by the system in the back end, not on the display side so they do in fact change size. e.g. see these three files for the same book, one is 2k, another 5k, the other is 11k.

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266...
http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266...
http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266...

(see the 's', 'm', 'l').

If anything the only consideration would be the CPU time the goodreads servers have to use doing the processing of doing the resizes to match their pre-detirmined sizes.

[Yossarian]

Chris, there's been instances of large-size image files on various books that end up taking ages to load, even on a computer as opposed to mobile device.

[Krystal109]

Thanks for the replies. I thought I had tried to add the cover during one and it lost my changes -- maybe it was something else.

Don't click the "Upload Image" unless it is the only change you are making, because it sends you back to the book page. What you want to do is fill in all the info, click the browse for the image, find the image on your desktop (or where you saved the file), and then go to the bottom of the books edit/add page and click save.

This will add all the info you entered and the cover.

[Krystal109]

Chris wrote: I don't believe this to be accurate lafon. The files are resized by the system in the back end,..."

You example actually proves lafon's statement. If you look, each image is called xxxx.jpg, but is a set size. In reality, the system can not have 3 images named the same thing or they would overwrite each other.

The system would have to save each image at a set size. Instead, the image (xxxx.jpg) is being referenced at the three sizes, but are coming from the same 1 image name.

This proves that 1 LARGE image is being downsized and references as x pixels by x pixels. If the image is over the maximum viewing size it is simply a waste and causes slow loading for web devices.

[Scott]

Ah, I didn't know that. I thought they both had to be done separately.

[Cait]

Krystal109 wrote: "You example actually proves lafon's statement. If you look, each image is called xxxx.jpg, but is a set size. In reality, the system can not have 3 images named the same thing or they would overwrite each other."

Yes, but each is in a different directory. Those are different files.

As far as I can tell, when an image is uploaded it's resized into the three ranges and saved as three images. (This is why you sometimes get a book cover which is broken at one size but not at another.) Remember that image size is not the only thing which determines file size for an image: there are also different types of encoding and compression. There may be uploaded images which are very large in file size but fall within the image size limits. (Alternatively, there may occasionally be connections to the image server which are slow for reasons unrelated to the image which is loading at the time; file size is a likely explanation, but not the only explanation, for a slow-loading image.)

[Vicky]

Krystal109 wrote: "Don't click the "Upload Image" unless it is the only change you are making, because it sends you back to the book page. What you want to do is fill in all the info, click the browse for the image, find the image on your desktop (or where you saved the file), and then go to the bottom of the books edit/add page and click save."

Actually... "Upload Image" also saves changes to the book. So you can fill in all the info, queue up your image and click "Upload Image" to save it all. I find it easier than scrolling back to the bottom of the page. ;)

[Krystal109]

Oh, didn't know that. So yea, either edit all the info and then upload the image last, or enter it into the browse field but do not click upload/save until you are done with all the info.

I use the "End" key to get to the bottom of the page instantly so it never bothers me and makes sure that I insert a librarian change comment (which should be mandatory).