Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Book & Author Page Issues
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Another user with a lot of bogus book entries
Isis, Did you happen to send them a private message? Just curious. I'm about to go check them out but don't have a lot of time now. 500 is a lot!
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Happy birthday Rivka!!! Enjoy your time off.
Lisa...no, I didn't PM them. I just groaned and wanted to bang my head into a wall. 
So far, I've just done a cursory look, but I know some are invalid entries. And with weird titles that include title, year, publisher, format:
Love's Golden Lariat,hb,1987,Avalon Books,0803486871
Stuff like that.
Holy mother of goodness, you weren't kidding! I'll pitch in.
Rivka, Ack!! Will you get a birthday cake at some point?Isis, That should work, the banging your head into the wall thing. ;-) AND, it's perfectly understandable. It's amazing how much work one or a few members can generate.
Isis, I did a quick check of some coverless titles but they had ISBNs. I didn't check to see if they were real ISBNs though.
Happy Birthday, Rivka! 
Lisa...yeah, interesting how one person can do so much damage.
Yikes! The first book I changed I see, "Last updated, one minute ago." I guess they just added it! Did anyone send them a message?
Jessica, I don't have time to look to see exactly what's what on their shelves so I don't know exactly what I'd want to write in a message, so I have not sent one.
For one thing, they are entering author names wrong:last, first
...it looks like they are messing up on what to do with books not on GR (just a guess)...the 2 I've tried so far...1 was not on GR (no ISBN) and the other had a reused ISBN.
Lisa, here's the one I sent to another user:Hi ***-
I have noticed recently that you have been adding books to the GoodReads database. Adding new editions of books is a great thing! Unfortunately, the ones that you have been adding already exist in our database. If you want to add books to your bookshelf, please do a search in the top right corner of the page (for best results search both the author and book at the same time). Then add that book to your shelf. If you happen to see that your particular edition is not on goodreads, you can add it, but please make sure to add the ISBN so librarians know that it is not a duplicate edition. Also, when adding the author, please type first and last name (ie- "Nora Roberts", instead of "Roberts, Nora." By doing this, anyone searching for Nora Roberts books will see your edition. Please make sure to follow all instructions when adding books (ie- no personal reviews of the book in the book information) and put in as much information as you know. The books that you have previously added have been merged with the existing editions. If you have any questions, please let me know, or visit the GoodRead librarians group.
Thanks, and happy reading!
Jessica
Feel free to hijack it.
I think the person understand GR's system...but for books not here, they are using their own method.They are putting all that unnecessary info in the title field, reversing the author name, and not using proper capitalization.
Jessica, That's very good. One thing though: not all books have ISBNs and in that case I ask them to enter as much information as they have. For old books I've manually added, at the beginning I didn't put in full information when I started, but then entered Library of Congress catalog number and/or whatever other identifying information there is. Also, you can point out the on the page where we can manually add books, there are some helpful instructions.
Do you feel comfortable messaging this member? (I'm about to be offline and can't do much on Goodreads tonight.)
I'm just competely confused by the comments she's putting in. They're going in the description fields too. Lisa- Good catch. I'll send them a message, and include your addition on the ISBN.
Thanks so much Jessica.Ugh. Sounds as though it's going to be a lot of work.
It's actually kind of amazing that with almost 2 million members we don't get more confused people than we do.
I think some people forget that this is a public database and that others use book entries too. Or they just don't care.
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I plan to make a schaum torte for the last days of Pesach, when my kids will be here.
Isis FG wrote: "Happy Birthday, Rivka!
Thanks. :)
Rivka, Yum. That would be good any time of year.Everybody, AND this person has "read" 7,084 books but has not rated even 1.
Isis, I'm hoping they just don't know, otherwise I'll be worried. Is there a faster way to see books they've added to the database? They have librarian status but I see no edits. I thought they would show up there. And rivka, happy birthday!
I'm guessing they are cataloging a personal library and that a number of the books aren't on GR. So they make a new entry but fill it out in a way that works best for them. Probably not thinking about the fact that it goes into a public database.Has anyone sent him/her a message yet?
And for some reason, they are puttinghttp://www.goodreads.com
in the book URL field on a number of books.
Isis, Jessica said she would. (message # 18)Isis, re what they're doing: I think you're right. This isn't the best site for what they're doing, at least the way they're doing it. I'll bet GR could work fine for them if they understood how it worked.
I sent them a message. Hopefully that'll help them. Now just need to figure out where to start...
It doesn't look like many of the books they've added can be combined/merged deleted. They seem valid for the most part (though I've deleted some others I've come across)...but the way they are formatted makes me cringe.The biggest problem is the last, first author names. That's adding a lot of bogus author pages to GR that will need to be fixed.
Otherwise I'm tempted to just say screw it and leave the books be, LOL.
Jessica wrote: "I sent them a message. Hopefully that'll help them. Now just need to figure out where to start..."Jessica, I've been trying to correct the last, first author names.
Ok this one needs a Super, it wasn't added by this user BTW. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29...Isis, I'm doing the same thing. I'm trying to clean up the formatting too.
Jessica...I deleted the one you posted.Yeah...the formatting is a another big problem.
Ok, one last thing - if that book exists elsewhere (can be combined and there is a similar edition), should I delete it? I find it hard to believe a Sneaky Pie book doesn't have an ISBN, and even if it is another edition, it might get deleted anyway. Thoughts?
Most of the ones I've seen I haven't deleted because they have really old dates...so they are likely pre-ISBN.But I have seen some the person added that did have a match on GR. They were more recent books, though.
Personally, I wouldn't delete ones unless I was really sure they matched someone already on GR.
I think I'm done GR Librarian work for the night, though. My eyes are starting to cross from trying to figure all this out.I'll try to work more on these books tomorrow.
Yes, Please make sure not to delete old books. I know I have a lot of those I had to manually add.
Smart move, Isis. I'll only delete ones that I can find another match to it. Sparingly.
Jessica, Merge, don't delete, if it's old. It really could be a different edition. Thanks.Edit: I meant combine.
I won't. Like I said, I'm going to check carefully. Publisher/style/page numbers. If it's old, I won't even think about it. I'm just talking new ones.
Thanks for all the work Jessica! I've done some of these with another member so I know how time consuming it can be.
Heh, you know what's sad? I did a ton of editing this week and thought, man, I should be catching up on my reading instead. Then I saw this...Editing books is very zen like after a stressful day at work though!
LOL...it can be. I spent quite a while today working on J.D. Robb books and didn't even realize how much time had passed. Which is why my poor brain is now fried.And this issue here is a complete mess. I don't even want to think about it.
So I think I will go get a Slurpee from 7-11 then read.
Mmmm slurpee....Please have a sip for me.
OK well this is weird. She put an ISBN in the title of this one, which I fixed and put in the ISBN slot, which promptly said it was being used elsewhere. So I did a search....and it's Bram Stoker's Dracula. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61...
I put the ISBN in the description.
I came across one like that as well.Either they got the ISBN wrong, or it's one of those oddities where ISBNs got reused for something completely different when they shouldn't have been.
Putting it in the description is the best you can do. Maybe add a note in the Librarian Note feature if you want to go the extra mile.
(...I really will get that Slurpee sooner or later, LOL...I'm such a GR addict)
Ok I'm giving up for the night. Can't keep my eyes open. I guess I could have used a Slurpee!
That particular ISBN was discussed in this thread. Apparently at one point Wal-mart issued a bunch of different classic titles all under that same ISBN.A librarian created a 'dummy' entry explaining to people what to do, i.e. pick a different edition or enter a blank edition, as can be seen in the Librarian Change Log.
However, some other librarian came along and changed it to the info for Dracula.
I think someone (preferablly with more authority than me) should message that second librarian, and explain the situation to them.
~goes off into corner to grumble about people who can't be bothered to READ something before they delete it~
I fixed the Walmart edition and added a librarian note to the beginning which will hopefully prevent someone from changing it back.
Thanks Michael.BTW, the link in the description was broken, so I put in a working one.
Well it looks like the message kind of worked. They added a bunch of books today and most of them are existing books...but I see a few that they have added are formatted incorrectly. Sigh. I think this is a librarian (as in the public kind, not GoodReads kind) adding their book collection, from the comments they have posted. I think a few were Dewey numbers and the rest look like section shelves.
If you go to their ALL shelf, switch to print view, then sort by ISBN...well, there appear to be about 500 entries with no ISBNs.
Some I think are valid...pre-ISBN, or alternate cover editions, but I think many will need to be merged and deleted.
I'll try to work on some, but I'm a bit brain fried...spent too much time on GR today already.