Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
[Closed] Added Books/Editions
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Combine Request - Astounding Stories of Super-Science
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So, I'm guessing you want these magazines put together as a series? Or did you actually upload multiple editions of the same magazine?
Well, adding them as a series would also be great. I didn't upload any new edition, as there seems to be countless of them added already. The problem is that they are not combined. Searching for "Astounding Stories of Super-Science February" for example ( https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8... ) I get 7 results. The first one has 10 editions combined already, but the other 6 are marked as standalone.
This is an enormous amount of work, just so you know. The biggest problem is they are listed under different authors: Some (correctly) have the editor first, but his name isn't actually on the cover. Several have the cover story author, which naturally is on the cover. A few are listed under "Various" (which should pretty much always be the last author on the list) and a few have entirely other authors and/or illustrators.
To be combined they have to all have their author lists fixed so that they have the same primary author (as I said, that should probably be the editor for the edition). And all the already combined editions need to be checked and possibly corrected too, because weird things happen in the database if all the editions don't have the same primary author.
This is something that really needs doing by someone who has the magazines and can get the author list from the TOC, because that'll be a lot easier to work from than trying to guess the info off those covers.
All of which is to say: If you post a list of the specific book pages, which author should be first, and which combined with which, any librarian can fix that in a heartbeat.
But it's not a simple task, and each edition needs to actually be researched and multiple editions corrected. (And then put in a series, maybe, I like series for the old PD periodicals, other librarians don't so much)
(Or you could apply to be a librarian, point to this thread and a few choice search results in your explanation why, and have at it yourself!)
I see what you guys said. I indeed believe that fixing everything would be a lot of work. I've never used goodreads too much, especially on less known books, but since I recently got a Kindle, I'm starting to come here more and more often. Is there any precedent of people with less than 50 books on the shelf being accepted as a librarian?As for the practical info, all the editions were edited by Harry Bates ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_B... ). The title of each story, with the author, can be found here ( https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Scienc... ). I believe it is a problem with periodicals that are in public domain, as more often than not, some people try to publish them without giving the correct information (including at the amazon store). The bright light at the end of the tunnel is that just like on Project Gutenberg the last version available as a "book" is the August 1931 edition.
You're right, the people republishing e-versions of public domain books can be very rough with the information (I've seen them credit entirely wrong authors, for very well known classic books, things like mixing up Dafoe and Wells, and seen both those names spelled wrong on covers!) Not all of them of course, some actually do a very nice job and take a lot of care with formatting and things, but unfortunately both kinds of publishers books wash up on GR.I hope I didn't give the impression it'll never get fixed, just that it's gonna take a while. It's just that if you don't know they have to have all the authors fixed first, it looks like a 5 minute job, and it's actually not. I spent maybe 15-20 minutes just on that February issue (including fixing a misspelling of Charles Diffin's name! And he's on the cover!)
I'll probably do a few, maybe some other librarians will pick up a few, they'll get done, eventually and hopefully sooner rather than later.
But, just knowing they all have the same editor is a big help!
(Forgot to answer your question: No, I think the 50 books line is pretty much set in stone, but you don't have to have read 50 books since you joined GR. It counts all your shelves, including to read, read 20 years ago and don't remember, and anything else you want to add. Which isn't to say you should spam your shelves just to get to 50, but rather you'll probably hit that quicker than you might think.)
Then maybe this is a nice page to keep track of who's doing what so that we're not all working on the same edition. I'll tackle January 1930 tonight and see what else I can do tomorrow
Thanks guys, it's really appreciated the work and effort you put into this. And I know too well it's not a five minutes job, the amount of time I've spent on Calibre the last weeks is way higher than I'm willing to admit. I'll try to update my shelf soon, and hopefully I'll be able to help you guys.
I did the feb 1930 one last night, but probably won't get back to this until this evening.
I'll start with March 1930 tonight.If we keep going at this rate we should be able to finish it before the end of the week ;)
I think I'll start at the other end :)
Good thinking! April 1930 is done now too.May 1930
I've been super busy this week, so I couldn't continue to work on this, but I'm going to work on it today. With some luck, I'll be able to finish.So that's it then.
I've made this into a series here: https://www.goodreads.com/series/1623...But there are a few editions in it of which I haven't been able to find out where they belong. These are:
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- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
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There are also a few combined edition of two-in-one or complete sets. I've added all of these in the series for now so we can have easy access, but feel free to remove them if they're not supposed to be in the series.
Dear Librarians, here is az anthology, whose editor was "János Áfra": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2..., can you correct his name and combine with his book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2.... And there two anthology editions, but its a duplicate, can you delete/combine it. Thank you for your help!
Sorry Jessica, João, didn't mean to leave you guys in the lurch, this week's been kind of crazy. And I see you got em all done without me! Awesome.(András, it's usually better to start your own thread with requests, so they don't get missed. This thread is about Astounding Stories)
Krazykiwi wrote: "Sorry Jessica, João, didn't mean to leave you guys in the lurch, this week's been kind of crazy. And I see you got em all done without me! Awesome.No matter, it's been a crazy week for me as well. But we're not completely done, and maybe you can help figure out those last three books that haven't been placed yet.
Since I'm going through the series at the moment, and just spent a good time editing them at calibre, I was going to fix their status here on goodreads, but I can't, since I'm not a librarian.
So I would like to ask for a charitable soul to combine the different editions. They are a complete train-wreck right now, with many alone editions, some combined together, but in different groups, etc. It shouldn't be too hard, as their naming is quite straight forward: "Astounding Stories of Super-Science [Month] [Year]".