Detrimental book description changes by onix ingram or ingram

[Lobstergirl]

I was looking at two different children's books I've read, both published by Marshall Cavendish Children's Books. I noticed that the description for each had been changed, from something rich and robust to a sentence fragment that didn't even end with a period. The changes were made by onix ingram or ingram. So one book went from this, which actually gives you some detail:

Dad's helping to build a new school, and he takes his son to watch its progress. They see lots of machines at work: a dump truck, a backhoe, an earthmover, a giant grader, a steamroller, a cement mixer, a crane, and more. Finally, the school is finished--just in time for the first day. Bill Thomson's exquisite illustrations, rendered in acrylic paint and colored pencils, are delivered in a double-spread vertical format, which, when the book is turned sideways, brings this building experience to life with unprecedented dramatic perspective.

To this, which is just pathetic:

A little boy joins his father at a construction site

And on the book Karate Hour, they changed the description from something detailed to this:

A dynamic celebration of the martial arts

which is just stupid....it does nothing to inform you what the book is about or how it is written or what the illustrations look like.

Anyway I've changed both books to the fuller description, but just wanted librarians to be aware of the detrimental changes onix ingram are making. BOOOO.

[Susie]

I've seen these automatic-updates coming in, too. I don't believe that they were able to do that historically. I saw someone saying that this was happening through the Amazon import recently, too. I've flagged the ones I've noticed, but perhaps this needs bringing up with support if it's ongoing?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Susie wrote: "I don't believe that they were able to do that historically."

We've always had imports, and we've had imports from multiple sources for over 2 years. With multiple sources came the need for each source to fall into a priority ranking. Data entered by users is still highest priority and should not be overwritten by an import. Please do flag any cases if you think it has been.

Data from one import source is supposed to be overwritten by data from higher-priority sources or by more recent data from the same source. However, if a librarian believes a given case to be something that should be reverted, you may do so.

[Susie]

I meant that I didn't believe that they were able to overwrite historically, but your explanation of the ranking system makes sense.

I've noticed that covers have been changed when the covers have been updated on Amazon, when we would normally add ACEs. In the instance I remember, it wouldn't allow me to revert the change, so I flagged it.

[Cait]

rivka wrote: "Data entered by users is still highest priority and should not be overwritten by an import. Please do flag any cases if you think it has been."

As I recall, it's been possible for this to happen in this way:
1. User enters description on X edition.
2. This description is made the default description.
3. The X edition is now using the default description.
4. The import comes in with an edition-specific description for X which is presumed better for that edition than the default description.

The problem is that there's no way to know how good a default description is for a particular edition....

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Cait, I think that's probably true because of how we handle default descriptions. Unfortunately, every other way we have tried to handle them was worse. The current system works relatively well, but it does allow for things like your example.

[Cait]

rivka wrote: "Cait, I think that's probably true because of how we handle default descriptions. Unfortunately, every other way we have tried to handle them was worse. The current system works relatively well, but it does allow for things like your example."

Yeah, I don't think anyone ever found a reasonable way of dealing with that. :(