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Q &A: Transitioning from Shelfari
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Barbara M
(new)
Feb 06, 2016 08:25AM
I cannot seem to find a place where I can look at all the shelves in GR. I have stumbled across it so I know it exists, but I can't find it when I want it! Surely some of our experts here will point it out and I'll do a head-slap for being so dumb!
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Barbara wrote: "I cannot seem to find a place where I can look at all the shelves in GR. I have stumbled across it so I know it exists, but I can't find it when I want it! Surely some of our experts here will poin..."The GR link is to click Explore on the top menu bar - the word itself, not the menu under the arrow next to it. On the right of that page is "Genres" with a "see more genres" at the bottom of that listing. You then get to the page
www.goodreads.com/shelf
At GR, genres are crowd-sourced from user shelves, if that helps in your thinking/remembering.
Jen wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Jen wrote: "Nicole wrote: "Jen wrote: "Is there a way to attach a photo to a message or topic? I wanted to post a few photos of my Folio edition of Jane Eyre -- I posted that review ..."Photobucket is free until you reach a certain volume.of accesses and bytes. I exceeded that for awhile and all posted images turned up blank until I paid a small monthly fee. Now I don't go wild with including images and I am back to the free rate.
In the html work note that the width is at most 400 pixels. Part of the pain is that once picking the width you need to calculate the height based on proportions of the image. Thus, if the image on your screen is 6 in wide by 4 in tall, you multiple 400 x 4/6 to get pixel height. You have to keep a ruler and a calculator handy (though in a pinch you can use the lines of notebook paper to get the needed proportions).
Michael wrote: "In the html work note that the width is at most 400 pixels. Part of the pain is that once picking the width you need to calculate the height based on proportions of the image. "Although I don't post very many images, I have never had to do this math. I think the system resizes the image.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "At GR, genres are crowd-sourced from user shelves, if that helps in your thinking/remembering. ..."Thanks, I followed your instructions and found it! At Shelfari, it was a "cloud" and I think that's pretty much what you mention here. It was just much easier to find!
Barbara wrote: "It was just much easier to find! "Glad you found it! For some reason, unfortunately, some features here at GR are so hidden that you have to have solved the secret treasure map.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "For some reason, unfortunately, some features here at GR are so hidden that you have to have solved the secret treasure map."It is funny how hard the shelves are to find! We link to them here somewhere, but still . . .once you know the URL, great, but I had a heck of a time discovering them, and I wouldn't have been able to without some guidance.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Rachel wrote: "Is there a way to get rid of a shelf? Yes. In the upper left of My Books is "edit" to the right of bookshelves. On that page are all of your shelves and to the left of each shelf name is an "x" which will delete that shelf and all of the books on it. ..."
an "x" which will delete that shelf and all of the books on it.
I hope you don't mean it will delete the books from my shelf ... but rather will just delete that shelf/tag from any of the books that I had used it for...
Book Concierge wrote: "I hope you don't mean it will delete the books from my shelf"I mean that the shelf will be deleted and the books associated with that shelf will no longer carry that shelf name. But no, the books won't be deleted from any other shelf.
Shelfarians,Here is a link to our participation points spreadsheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
It is still organized by your Shelfari name. If you have a different Goodreads name, I've denoted that next to your Shelfari one.
I feel like I have not linked some of the Shelfari and GR names. If you see you have two lines in the spreadsheet - - one for Shelfari and one for GR, please alert me!
The whole shelf discussion was so helpful. 'Abandoned. In possession of' hidden links. Most helpful.
I'm happy that so many of you seem to be settling into "shelves" versus "tags."I noticed in the discussion about finding all of the shelves, that depending on how you access them, GR has them presented differently. In the group FAQ, it suggests you select "genres" from the drop down menu, then "more genres" on the right. When you see them this way, they are in alphabetical order. You can also get to them by clicking "popular" on the Explore drop down, and then popular shelves and they will be ordered by popular. (Well, duh.) This is also the order when you go directly to the URL https://www.goodreads.com/shelf. No matter how you get to the listing, you can search for a specific shelf name.
That "Popular" drop down can be interesting. The popular books by month/year goes back only about 3 years, I think, and annually only for 100 years. The list gives only the top 200 most popular for any date selected, but surely a good place to start if you're looking for books published in a specific year. Also, book by year are the various listopia "best of" by year = https://www.goodreads.com/list/best_b.... "Best of" being very subjective, of course.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I'm happy that so many of you seem to be settling into "shelves" versus "tags."I noticed in the discussion about finding all of the shelves, that depending on how you access them, GR has them pre..."
It's my understanding that we will be choosing our "tags" from the 200 most popular shelves? So, it might be to my benefit to try to synchronize my shelf names with those shelf names if I have used slightly different wording for the same concept?
Denizen wrote: "So, it might be to my benefit to try to synchronize my shelf names with those shelf names if I have used slightly different wording for the same concept?"Well, I'm new to PBT, so I don't know if that would be the best approach or not. I do know that when you look at shelves here, you should be able to see whether or not you have any of the books on *your* shelves. It's true you can't filter by that criteria, but "hmm that looks interesting" has often been my downfall in adding books to my shelves anyway.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I noticed in the discussion about finding all of the shelves, that depending on how you access them, GR has them presented differently. In the group FAQ, it suggests you select "genres" from the drop down menu, then "more genres" on the right."So, I just want to differentiate between two different activities that PBT members do in order to avoid confusion.
1. We look for books that fit a particular tag (shelf).
2. We have an existing book, and we want to know IF the specific title truly fits a particular tag (shelf).
Nicole has provided specific and different directions for each activity in the FAQ.
Generally, we do a whole lot more of #1, and for that, we want to use the link: https://www.goodreads.com/shelf where we can see the books that best fit the tag (shelf) because they've been denoted many times as being a fit.
The second activity seems harder to achieve on Goodreads. That's where our FAQ suggest looking through the genres links . . .not sure if there's a better way.
Denizen wrote: "It's my understanding that we will be choosing our "tags" from the 200 most popular shelves? So, it might be to my benefit to try to synchronize my shelf names with those shelf names if I have used slightly different wording for the same concept"So yes, we have taken the top 200 most popular shelves (excluding ones that are sorta meaningless to use such as "own" or "to-buy"), and are using those to randomly select our three options for the month.
Personally, I do see how matching your shelves to those shelves might be helpful, but agree with Elizabeth that it's probably easier to simply go to the Goodreads shelf in question and start scrolling the list to see which books are marked as "want to read" . . .those are books on your shelf that fit the tag (shelf).
Anita wrote: "2. We have an existing book, and we want to know IF the specific title truly fits a particular tag (shelf)."If you want to see if a specific book is listed on a specific shelf, getting that information isn't too difficult. Go to the book page and on the right is "genres." Your shelf name may be there. If it is not there, you can click on the "see top shelves" beneath the genres on the book page. That link isn't to top shelves Goodreads-wide, but to a list of top shelves for that book.
Example for WWII:
The Execution of Private Slovik
on the right, bottom genre is WWII, shelved by 2 users
North hasn't been shelved very many times, and WWII doesn't appear in the genres section, but clicking "see top shelves" gets you to: https://www.goodreads.com/work/shelve...
You can see "world war two" and "world war 2" are on that page - you can use your browser's find feature when your eyes glaze over to find that. (I knew it is shelved as world war two because I have it shelved that way and is how I knew to give this a look.)
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Anita wrote: "2. We have an existing book, and we want to know IF the specific title truly fits a particular tag (shelf)."If you want to see if a specific book is listed on a specific shelf, gett..."
Great explanation! Thanks for putting it here. I think the more we can share these methods for finding the books we want, the better PBT will function. It takes some time for us Shelfarians to get the hang, but it is gratifying to realize that the shelving system here is pretty robust, and we can do what we really want and need to do to make this group function well!
Anita wrote: "but it is gratifying to realize that the shelving system here is pretty robust, and we can do what we really want and need to do to make this group function well! "GR members are shelving fanatics and many will put a book on as many shelves as they think it fits. Some won't work - like I have a Kindle shelf - but most have at least one, if not several, very descriptive shelves that PBT members would find useful.
Is there a way to make subsets or folders of shelves? My list of shelves is already getting longish and it is a pain to scroll through them all when adding new books. Folders or sub-shelves would help to keep the main list shorter. For example, I could have a main shelf called "countries" and when I clicked on that I would see the shelves "England" "France" "India" "Ireland" "Italy" "Japan" "Mexico", etc.I apologize if someone has already asked this. I haven't have time to carefully read all the posts!
Ghost of a Rose wrote: "Is there a way to make subsets or folders of shelves? My list of shelves is already getting longish and it is a pain to scroll through them all when adding new books. Folders or sub-shelves would h..."No, there isn't, although that has been requested numerous times. I don't know where you are scrolling, but when adding books, you can put in at least part of the shelf name and a subset of shelves with those letters will usually come up. That should help some.
Another thing not mentioned previously is that you can make "sticky" shelves of some of your most frequently used non-exclusive shelves. These, then, would rise to the top of your list of shelves in your My Books and on your Home Page. That option is on the Edit Shelves page.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Ghost of a Rose wrote: "Is there a way to make subsets or folders of shelves? My list of shelves is already getting longish and it is a pain to scroll through them all when adding new books. Folder..."Thank you, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Another thing not mentioned previously is that you can make "sticky" shelves of some of your most frequently used non-exclusive shelves. These, then, would rise to the top of your list of shelves in your My Books and on your Home Page. That option is on the Edit Shelves page. ."This is very helpful - I could make challenge shelves sticky which helps since those are the ones I use quite a bit as well as a number of others I use quite often.
I know there is a way to add multiple editions of a book to a shelf since this is the work around for multiple reads. I have done it by accident a bunch of times, but I can't figure out how to do it on purpose. There are some books that I own leather bound editions and kindle editions and I want them both on my shelf and I can't seem to do it although both editions are on the editions list. I am sure it is simple to do, can someone point it out to me?
Yes. Rather than click "switch to this edition" on the other editions page, move your second edition to the book page. You can now use the Want to Read button, which will add this other edition to your shelves, or in the My Review section click (on the right) "Review this Edition". Either should add the second edition to your shelves.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Yes. Rather than click "switch to this edition" on the other editions page, move your second edition to the book page. You can now use the Want to Read button, which will add this other edition to ..."Thank you! It was driving me crazy but "Review this Edition" worked for me.
I don't think this has been asked. I did a search and couldn't find anything. I'm sorry if it has been.Anyway, I've noticed that some people are putting stars in their review titles. How do you get the stars? Is it an html thing that I just need to Google how to do? I know I can copy and paste ones that are already there, but I was wondering if there was an easier way? What am I missing, lol? Thanks!
Jenni Elyse wrote: "I don't think this has been asked. I did a search and couldn't find anything. I'm sorry if it has been.Anyway, I've noticed that some people are putting stars in their review titles. How do you g..."
I have a Mac and the symbols are built into the edit menu. I know you can do it with HTML but I have had a Mac for so long I don't remember the code, but I'm sure someone here will.
Linda S wrote: "Jenni Elyse wrote: "I don't think this has been asked. I did a search and couldn't find anything. I'm sorry if it has been.Anyway, I've noticed that some people are putting stars in their review ..."
I use a Mac too. I know you can create some characters by holding down the Alt or Alt + Shift key and then another letter/number on the keyboard. I just wasn't sure if the star was one of them. After some Googling, it looks like I have to copy and paste or open Emoji & Symbols from the Edit menu.
I am a Windows user, and keep a text editor open for those things I want to copy/paste frequently. It's hard for me to imagine that a Mac doesn't have a similar option.
Jenni Elyse wrote: "After some Googling, it looks like I have to copy and paste or open Emoji & Symbols from the Edit menu.."I didn't know you had a Mac I would have told you how to do it; I use the edit menu and use the symbol for a star. It's easy enough.
HTML CODE for stars - type the code with NO SPACESOpen star: & # 9 7 3 4 = ☆
Black star: & # 9 7 3 3 = ★
Linda S wrote: "Jenni Elyse wrote: "After some Googling, it looks like I have to copy and paste or open Emoji & Symbols from the Edit menu.."I didn't know you had a Mac I would have told you how to do it; I use ..."
No problem. I understand completely. I didn't say anything about using a Mac vs. a PC. :)
Book Concierge wrote: "HTML CODE for stars - type the code with NO SPACESOpen star: & # 9 7 3 4 = ☆
Black star: & # 9 7 3 3 = ★"
Thanks!
Did you know that NOW you can merge with Goodreads and that you can have your tags, etc imported DIRECTLY here? Just wait, there's more. If you log onto Shelfari now, it's so simple it's all you can do there. You simply sign in, click on the appropriate link and, voila, your tags, books and all move here. But wait--there's more! If you have a duplicate Shelf here, your tag from Shelfari will be marked separately. But wait, there's even more! You an still opt for CSV files. Why wait? I did this today and, despite warnings that it could take time, they were done before I was done here.
Karin wrote: "Did you know that NOW you can merge with Goodreads and that you can have your tags, etc imported DIRECTLY here? Just wait, there's more. If you log onto Shelfari now, it's so simple it's all you ca..."Wait what!!??
Karin wrote: "Did you know that NOW you can merge with Goodreads and that you can have your tags, etc imported DIRECTLY here? Just wait, there's more. If you log onto Shelfari now, it's so simple it's all you ca..."Well, darn! I jumped through several hoops to get where I am now, and NOW it becomes easy?? Shoot!
Are you saying that I could do this again and it won't over-write what I fixed and will fix what I haven't gotten to yet? I just wouldn't want it to screw up what I worked so hard (for months!) to get right!
Some of you still transferring data from Shelfari may be interested in this comment in the Feedback group.https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Barbara wrote: "Are you saying that I could do this again and it won't over-write what I fixed and will fix what I haven't gotten to yet? I just wouldn't want it to screw up what I worked so hard (for months!) to get right! "My fear exactly!
Yes, this IS what I'm saying. AND if you have the same shelf here as a tag there, it will make a new tag for the Shelfari one so you can tell them apart.eg
Fiction
Shelfari-Fiction
I did it again, so feel free to look at my shelves for an example.
Anita wrote: "Barbara wrote: "Are you saying that I could do this again and it won't over-write what I fixed and will fix what I haven't gotten to yet? ...
My fear exactly! "
It's just too scary, I can't bring myself to try with my account. However, I have another account I use for my quilting library and I think I may try it for that, especially since I didn't use tags there!
Karin wrote: "Yes, this IS what I'm saying. AND if you have the same shelf here as a tag there, it will make a new tag for the Shelfari one so you can tell them..."Awhile back when I was importing from Shelfari to Goodreads I had to put dashes between words for all multiword tags. It would be great if they finally automated tag to shelf conversion.
Someone named Sneha has posted 3 times I think a bunch of links that I don't want on my personal challenge thread (where I keep track of my stuff). I don't think I can remove them. Is there a way they can be removed?
Kristel wrote: "Someone named Sneha has posted 3 times I think a bunch of links that I don't want on my personal challenge thread (where I keep track of my stuff). I don't think I can remove them. Is there a way t..."Yes, Kristel - - I can remove them for you. So sorry about that!! Some spam person. I did report them.
Anita wrote: "Kristel wrote: "Someone named Sneha has posted 3 times I think a bunch of links that I don't want on my personal challenge thread (where I keep track of my stuff). I don't think I can remove them. ..."Thank you
I just want to say that I'm having a hard time with Goodreads - I have a hard time with change in general! Don't give up on me as I'm sure I will learn the ropes and be involved again!
Hi, Raine. I have a tough time with change, as well. GR has gotten easier the more I've posted here. It will get better!
Raine wrote: "I just want to say that I'm having a hard time with Goodreads - I have a hard time with change in general! Don't give up on me as I'm sure I will learn the ropes and be involved again!"We won't give up on you, Raine! Let us know how we can help!!
LOL - that was May - I am going to try to be fully participating in July. We had a sickness and death in our family and I wasn't reading at all, but I have been able to pick up on my reading now. I'm going to try to post some of my reviews here and see how I do. I work with computers all day so I should be able to figure this out - I just don't like change!
Good luck, Raine, and I'm sorry to hear about your family's illness and death. :-(
Play Book Tag
Books mentioned in this topic
There are Little Kingdoms: Stories (other topics)The Lilac Bus (other topics)
The Execution of Private Slovik (other topics)
North (other topics)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (other topics)
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