Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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I don't see the point of importing data, every import I've seen has been wrong, or if not wrong significantly different to the book.
Mod
Highly unlikely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirma...
Mod
You realize we import 100,000s of book record every week, right?
I'm sorry I don't see your point. The purpose of this site as I see it is to provide an as accurate record of a book as possible, The cover, the publisher, the pages, the date, and all authors who contributed with a description that if possible but not necessarily comes from the book cover or sleeve.
It shouldn't read like a review or advert.
Many of these imports especially for reference, probably because there aren't as many that have been changed by librarians have reviews, adverts as utter nonsense fed in from onix and various other places. Some of which have used Amazon reviews themselves and have subsequently been sent here. Yesterday one books had the title set to contain the ISBN of a totally different book by the same author. Another had the pages set to 0. A lot look like edits to a book previously added by a goodreads member. I'm wondering if these sites will come back on and change it back.
Mod
Must be the type of book I'm mainly working on then Rivka or perhaps I'm just unlucky
Jozef wrote: "Must be the type of book I'm mainly working on then Rivka or perhaps I'm just unlucky"Possibly, but also we often don't go into correct records because they don't need editing, and therefore we don't see who imported them... :)
I do and I can assure you that most of the time They're either imported and edited or added entirely by members. But as I said most of my books are reference rather than novels. Very few are here to start with and of those that are most are incomplete. But does this mean that Amazon is going to be continually undoing our edits and replacing them with potentially incorrect information? Or are imports limited to new entries?
My understanding is that feeds won't update but will add, but Rivka knows FAR more than I!
Mod
Yes, Jozef, imported errors are a HUGE problem. Imgram in particular, but not entirely. I try to check to see where errors came from often, and it's often them. Very often.There are a few massive errors made by a few librarians that are in the process of being remedied (and I mean, hundreds and hundreds by the same Librarian), but other than that, imports are a real PIA.
Also, of course, "that's why we have (FREE LABOR) librarians" is self explanatory :)
For example, WHY can't single initial (usually middle initial) without any punctuation (periods) be remedied upon import? They could be, of course, but it's easier/cheaper to leave them as is and hope that librarians fix them.
I don't anymore, unless I'm editing some other problem. Too boring, and frankly, a waste of time when something could be done about it before it hits the public pages.
End of rant.
What are the most common errors made by librarians ? I may be guilty of one? Gawd I'd hate to think I'd made a thousand errors that have to be undone. I make some but usually manage to correct them without help. If I couldn't I'd always ask for help. And yes ingram was the one I couldn't think of.
As long as user edits have priority then we'll be okay.
Mod
Please start a new thread if you'd like to pursue this. (Might be interesting, if posters can be careful not to link to specific users' logs, etc.)
Jozef wrote: " A lot look like edits to a book previously added by a goodreads member. I'm wondering if these sites will come back on and change it back..."Do you have an example so the librarians can look at the change log to find where ingram onix or other data feed overwrote a field entered manually edited by a librarian? Not arguing that the data imports are always correct, just that they don't overwrite existing data.
Last I knew, the data imports were all set to never overwrite a manual change made by goodreads members or librarians. The only largish volume of problems I saw happen was when an particular editn left description blank in order to use defaul description (by being blank a data import would add a description).
I'm probably wrong on it changing. I was concerned because I thought it could do. I've added a lot of books that I've got in my library and a lot of those were either not on here or were imports that no one or very few had added and most of the info was missing or wrong. Mainly reference books, crafts, guides etc rather than novels. Most of the novels have been correct, I suspect because they're popular and have been updated by members.
There must be hundreds of thousands if not millions of reference books not even on here. People seem to be a lot keener to add novels so I suppose in one way it is at least adding them and there is a chance a librarian may stumble across them and update pages, author etc. So I do see the positive side to imports.
Off topic again really but regarding reference I think shelving system is off putting. A reference book is never really read its always to read by its nature and I don't really like adding them to 'to-read' I wonder if that puts people off.
But anway I shall keep an eye on the ones on my shelves
You can make an exclusive Reference shelf.
Will the import overwrite page numbers? Amazon are terrible on page numbers, often putting a standard 400 on books that are much shorter or longer.
Mod
Not if they were added by users. Possibly if they came from a different import source; sources have priority rankings, based on a number of factors.
I'm a bit worried about the tons of secondary authors (like translators) with just initial + last name (that's the style on Amazon) that are going to be imported, but there's probably little to do about it.
I have tried to add my new book and the cover doesn't show. This is a book I've written. Can you help?
Sharon, please start a new thread for the issue with your book.
Mod
Please feel free to start new thread(s) for any questions about related policies.
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That's why we have librarians! :)"
Of course :) but can librarians have a look of all imports? It would be great if data imported from Amazon (or other, I found many other books coming from other sources with wrong data) will be added in a sort of list, so librarians can control and prevent any mistakes.