Shelfarians discussion
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So overwhelmed
I tried importing my shelf to GR about 3 or 4 years ago, and only about 10% came through. I left it at that, but I've updated everything since then.
Does anyone know if I was to email my file to goodreads if they would be able to only update what isn't already there. I don't want to mess up what I've added since.
Thanks!
LibraryCin wrote: "I tried importing my shelf to GR about 3 or 4 years ago, and only about 10% came through. I left it at that, but I've updated everything since then.
Does anyone know if I was to email my file to..."
My recommendation would be to attach the file and pose the question to Goodreads.
My first attempt failed but with assistance from GR I managed to get my second file to GR. I would contact the help section.
Jonetta wrote: "My recommendation would be to attach the file and pose the question to Goodreads. "hmmm, thanks, Jonetta.
Wow, I haven't tried transferring my bookshelf from Shelfari to Good Reads yet . . . I will make sure to have plenty of time and to pay attention to what shows on the screen. I was very comfortable with the format and display of Shelfari and am trying very hard to be positive about this change . . . but truthfully, it feels like I am losing a friend . . . or more aptly . . . they are tearing down one of my favourite haunts/buildings . . . very sad, but it is good to see some familiar faces from Shelfari.
After several weeks I now have 2,400 of my 2,700 book Shelfari library imported to Goodreads. My first attempt only imported 800 books. I contacted Goodreads support and with their help now only have about 300 missing. Although 300 is a lot, it is so much better than missing 1,900. The support person kept working with me and it was a good experience. Sad to see the end of Shelfari, but time to move on and learn the new site and get back to enjoying my reading.
If I may add my own comment... or rather complaint;I just realized that the "date read" did not transfer over and I'm rather despondent over that. I used to manually keep track of when I had finished reading a book and then I trusted that information to Shelfari and now all that is gone...
Hmmph. Nothing lasts forever, I suppose?
Ellen wrote: "After several weeks I now have 2,400 of my 2,700 book Shelfari library imported to Goodreads. My first attempt only imported 800 books. I contacted Goodreads support and with their help now only ha..."That's great--you're making a lot of progress.
Katherine wrote: "If I may add my own comment... or rather complaint;I just realized that the "date read" did not transfer over and I'm rather despondent over that. I used to manually keep track of when I had finis..."
No kidding; that peeved me, too. On the one hand, I don't know many of the dates, but on the other it was helpful for the ones I had posted.
Katherine wrote: "If I may add my own comment... or rather complaint;I just realized that the "date read" did not transfer over and I'm rather despondent over that. I used to manually keep track of when I had finis..."
I had the same issue when I did my export. I went back to Shelfari and did the "Export to CSV", and then imported that file into Goodreads and it populated many of my dates read. About half of the dates were wrong, so it definitely wasn't perfect, but they were all in the correct year. Some are better than none, I suppose.....
Brad wrote: "Katherine wrote: "If I may add my own comment... or rather complaint;I just realized that the "date read" did not transfer over and I'm rather despondent over that. I used to manually keep track o..."
I agree with all of the above along with the fact that I used to enjoy seeing the purchase date and purchase amount. Luckily, for my audio and e-books, I can go to my amazon account, check the activity to see how much and when I made a purchase, sadly this is of no use for my dtb's. As it has been stated before me, I have no way of visiting and reminiscing when I read a particular book. It is very depressing.
Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "I agree with all of the above along with the fact that I used to enjoy seeing the purchase date and purchase amount. Luckily, for my audio and e-books, I can go to my amazon account, check the activity to see how much and when I made a purchase, sadly this is of no use for my dtb's. As it has been stated before me, I have no way of visiting and reminiscing when I read a particular book. It is very depressing...." Dosha, I put all of that information in the private notes section as I think it important, too. At least you can do that going forward.
You know that file you downloaded and saved? You can import it into an Excel spreadsheet and use it as reference going forward. Then you can add that data to Goodreads as you reference your old files. If you know someone who is proficient in Excel, maybe they can help you. It takes minutes.
Jonetta wrote: "Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "I agree with all of the above along with the fact that I used to enjoy seeing the purchase date and purchase amount. Luckily, for my audio and e-books, I can go to my ..."Hi Jonetta, I do it now in private notes too. So, I'm not the only one that enjoyed doing that? Your last sentence, "It takes minutes." Are we talking 120 minutes? lol Just joking.
Lol!!! I stumbled into doing this import last year but cannot remember what I did. With someone who knows what they're doing? Less than 5 minutes:)
Hi everyone, totally bummed about Shelfari going away. Some of you may know me as the moderator for the Who Doesn't Love a Classic group over there. Well, I created the same group here. It's private for now, while the kinks get worked out. But if you want to request to join, just say you're from Shelfari. Who Doesn't Love a Classic?
I guess that's all for now :(
Honestly, i'm still not sure if i'm moving at all to goodreads... I miss the clean look i've come to expect and enjoy from shelfari... In fact years ago when i first thought of joining a book website these we're the ones i had to choose from and i find shelfari far more clean and intuitive. And now i've found over 100 of my books didn't make it through >:/
LadyJoana wrote: "Honestly, i'm still not sure if i'm moving at all to goodreads... I miss the clean look i've come to expect and enjoy from shelfari... In fact years ago when i first thought of joining a book websi..."Hi LadyJoana,
While Goodreads is the site that Amazon is pushing Shelfarians toward, there are certainly other options out there...
Leafmarks
LibraryThing
Booklikes
I'm not a big fan of Leafmarks right now. I notice everyone else seems to love it. I don't find it user friendly at all. It is increasingly harder for me to figure out how to tweak certain things, it responds very slowly without the little circle spinning to let me know its processing. Annoyed is an understatement.
Leafmarks just isn't as established as Goodreads or LibraryThing. I would rather spend my time reading and discussing books than looking for book and covers to add to their database. My problem with LibraryThing is the lack of activity in the groups that appeal to me and, ironically, their nested comments are distracting.
Lauren wrote: "Leafmarks just isn't as established as Goodreads or LibraryThing. I would rather spend my time reading and discussing books than looking for book and covers to add to their database. My problem w..."
I think I don't understand the term "nesting". I thought it meant comments stacked on top of each other in order of appearance.
Nesting refers to comments indenting when it's a reply to a specific comment. You know how on Shelfari we could reply under a comment, especially with book discussions, and it would be shown directly under that comment indented? That's referred to as nesting. Here's the best example. On Shelfari, we could post all of the discussion questions for a book on a page and the responses to each would be indented. It was quite orderly.
Jonetta wrote: "Nesting refers to comments indenting when it's a reply to a specific comment. You know how on Shelfari we could reply under a comment, especially with book discussions, and it would be shown direct..."okay, so I think I partially understood. Orderly sums it up very well.
Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "Jonetta wrote: "Nesting refers to comments indenting when it's a reply to a specific comment. You know how on Shelfari we could reply under a comment, especially with book discussions, and it would..."The only one with nesting now isn't as well set up as Shelfari was and you have to see every reply every time you go on.
Here, if you click on a comment to reply, it will show you what it refers to, but then you lose the new tags and if you haven't yet read every answer it can be tough. Each message in a thread is numbered here (I'm replying to message 73, so this will be message 74, but if I were replying to Jonetta's explanation in message 72, this would still be 74.
What would really be great, and they had this on my former homeschooling forum, is if you could reply to more than one post in one thread by hitting a link on each one you were responding to.
Has a What We Are Reading group carried over from Shelfari to GR?
Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "Has a What We Are Reading group carried over from Shelfari to GR?"The Historical Fiction group has one Leafmarks.
Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "I'm not a big fan of Leafmarks right now. I notice everyone else seems to love it. I don't find it user friendly at all. It is increasingly harder for me to figure out how to tweak certain things, ..."I agree with you. Now I'm trying out onlinebookclub.org for size.
Chuck wrote: "Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "I'm not a big fan of Leafmarks right now. I notice everyone else seems to love it. I don't find it user friendly at all. It is increasingly harder for me to figure out..."I'll look into it also.
I am not liking the group set up at Leafmarks AT ALL! You cant start a 'topic' unless you are an adminstrator. You can start a 'thread' within a topic. You can 'ask' the administrator to start a 'topic' if there is a topic you want to start. Weird.
Koren wrote: "I am not liking the group set up at Leafmarks AT ALL! You cant start a 'topic' unless you are an adminstrator. You can start a 'thread' within a topic. You can 'ask' the administrator to start a 't..."When I went to onlinebookclub.org, it does not look like they have groups. They have forums. Maybe there are groups and I have not been able to find them. Or, maybe forums are groups?
Koren wrote: "I am not liking the group set up at Leafmarks AT ALL! You cant start a 'topic' unless you are an adminstrator. You can start a 'thread' within a topic. You can 'ask' the administrator to start a 't..."Koren, I'm not a fan of topics and threads both. It's similar to what's here, with folders, then threads.
I lost 500 books with the transfer to GR.GR made a suggestion and that didn't work. I am keeping Leafmarks and GR up to date,but also going back to my handwritten journal for my books read. I also am not worrying abt reviews that didn't make it. I saved a couple from books I really loved and that is it.I will say GR was very fast in responding to my question abt the lost books, they responded within abt 30 minutes,couldn't believe it. I do like the ease of Shelfari. GR and Leafmarks are too awkward.Thankfully ,I had kept a private group on Shelfari as a place for my books that I read, and I printed them as each year ended.
Laurie wrote: "I lost 500 books with the transfer to GR.GR made a suggestion and that didn't work. I am keeping Leafmarks and GR up to date,but also going back to my handwritten journal for my books read. I also ..."that was smart for you to keep a printed copy of books read each year end. I wish I had done that, and may begin to do so beginning this year's end.
Dosha, go for it! I had started handwritten lists prior to Shelfari. Then did the "group" thing.I started a group on GR just to make a list of books. I am a bricks and mortar person,as they say, and this shelfari business just makes me want to go back to a handwritten journal.I don't know how long you were on shelfari.I was on for 8 yrs.What good was building the shelf the first few years and then maintaining it? The same thing could happena gain to any of the books sites. Very frustrating. If I do go back to handwritten, I will dress ti up a bit like a scrapbook,at least it will be more interesting. I feel your pain.My mother keeps a legal pad with hers.I don't know which 500 books I lost either.
me too! All the books are marked "read"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now we have to go back and change all our books to the status they should be? Sounding more like a job and not a hobby.
Laurie wrote: "me too! All the books are marked "read"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now we have to go back and change all our books to the status they should be? Sounding more like a job and not a hobby."Laurie, at first I thought I would keep a spreadsheet, but then again, here we go depending on technology. The safest bet is going to be hard copy. I think I like the scrapbook theme the best. The closer we get to the ides of March, the more depressed I get because every day, I am trying to fix what is wrong on GR and you are so right, there is no guarantee GR is here to stay.
Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "there is no guarantee GR is here to stay. ."While nothing is ever a sure thing, I think it is safe to say that GR will be in it for the long hall. It's a much bigger site than Shelfari and Amazon is investing in it rather than letting it die.
That said, it is always a good idea to have a back up.
I would like to think that they would give us notice and then there is time to download shelves......
Deborah wrote: "I looked at GR and not all my books crossed over either. I then checked my email and they told me 64 books haven't made it across.... it didn't say why. Its very frustrating!"This happened to me too. I tried the first option offered on Shelfari and got less that 1/4 of my books moved. Then I did the CSV option. I couldn't get it to download into GR. When I contacted Goodreads, I was told that I had to break my 3,000 books on the CSV file down to 400 at a time - or I could ask them to do it. I had them do it. It was still wrong (read vs to read) and many reviews didn't make it. I've been working with Shelfari open in one tab and GR open in the other. I copied and pasted my Shelfari shelf in "list view - alphabetical" and pasted it to Word. I have Word open so that I go through one book at a time, copy and past the correct information including tags (now shelves) and I've almost made it. Hope I finish before the site shuts down. This has been really horrible.
Barbara wrote: "This happened to me too. I tried the first option offered on Shelfari and got less that 1/4 of my books moved. Then I did the CSV option.... Hope I finish before the site shuts down. This has been really horrible..."Since you have the CSV file, you should be able to open that with a spreadsheet program, (Excel, Libre Office, Open Office, Google Docs, etc), and copy & paste from there. So, if you don't finish before Shelfari closes down, you should still have this 2nd option.
Dosha (Bluestocking7) wrote: "Laurie wrote: "me too! All the books are marked "read"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now we have to go back and change all our books to the status they should be? Sounding more like a job and not a hobby."Lau..."
Thanks Dosha! Unless our houses burn down, the paper lists are safe.
really miss the visual and the shelves, have not managed to find many of the same features as Shelfari, to say nothing of missing dates and reviews, it feels like a foreign country right now, not too happy with it. Book journal is looking attractive.
Mercedes wrote: "really miss the visual and the shelves, have not managed to find many of the same features as Shelfari, to say nothing of missing dates and reviews, it feels like a foreign country right now, not t..."I completely understand how you feel and in a moment of annoyance i even sent a complain letter to amazon (even though i knew it would amount to nothing and would probably receive no answer). They did respond however.
"As you are someone who uses the Shelfari blog widget, we wanted to let you know that we will only offer a Goodreads bookshelf widget for blogs from March 16, 2016. We would therefore like to invite you to now start using the Goodreads widget. "
This was their response when i said i loved the clean, organized shelf like appearance of shelfari and would hate to lose it since it was the main reason i even joined a book website. I do not own a blog, i have never owned a blog, do not intend to own one or have mentioned anything about a blog in my email.
Their response has left me very confused and annoyed, especially since i will have to add over 100 books that did not make through and alter every book date that did make through. I deem their service to users poor and a joke. And yes i've tried everything to remedy this, using the normal means as others mentioned before, now i'm making my own offsite list since it seems better than to lose it all again...
I had never heard of a book journal, but i agree it does seem like a good option. I'll miss being able to share books with my friends though and that's the only reason thats making me stay. However, i'll most likely make this a back up and dedicate to a list of another site until something like shelfari rises again. Maybe an app or something.
my former book journal was just notebooks I bought at Dollar store or actual journals. I think for now I will start with regular lined paper and "dazzle" it as a scrapbook page at end of year,or just keep using the notebook.I might use 1 page per book to do review etc. My backup is now Goodreads.I did actually buy a book journal thru Victorian Papers catalog.Nice 5x 8 size and all sorts of sections for notes and reviews,favorites,borrowed or lent out books.But a true reader will fill it up quickly.
Laurie wrote: "my former book journal was just notebooks I bought at Dollar store or actual journals. I think for now I will start with regular lined paper and "dazzle" it as a scrapbook page at end of year,or ju..."I may look into that anyway. I expect that scrapbooking will be my answer.
I deleted everything off good reads as I'm going to try and manipulate the tsv data so they don't load as "read" unless actually read. Also plan to break it up to import only 100 at a time to make it easier to check.
Requires mucking with Excel and a HUGE spreadsheet but you can hide most of the extraneous data columns that IMO don't matter.
I've stopped marking anything on shelfari so i could make a final export request. Feels so odd now. I've kept on reading instead of taking the time to do the above. Wonder how long my list of titles and dates will get before i can add them in.
In case i have to dump the GR data again to start over, I'm not recording the new reads.
Anyways that's the plan. I definitely miss the simplicity and non white color scheme of the wooden bookshelves.
So sorry to see Shelfaire go. I've been keeping a notebook with bookmarks for each book I read. Now that they moved over my books I feel like I have over a thousand shelves.
Really? Only a few weeks after a ton of shelfari refugees arrive, they go and change things around here - just when we are trying to get used to things as they are!!! Grrrrr!
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Similar thing happened to me, Jerry. Jonetta is right that e-mailing suppo..."
I agree. Goodreads support has been great. They responded to my query within a few hours and helped me to import a large library.
ScoLgo, don't give up hope on those last 58 books, they may still come in. I noticed today that books are still slowly importing to my shelf. I'm now missing only 11 books.