Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Announcement: Updated Policy on ISBNs and ASINs
Kathleen wrote: "Change makes good sense. Thanks!"Only if you write, publish, re-write, re-publish, re-write, re-publish, re-write, re-publish, re-write, re-publish, re-write, re-publish, ...
Those of us who actually BUY BOOKS don't do this and would prefer to have accurate records of what we own.
Mod
This is addressed in the updated section of the Manual:
In the other case of duplicate ISBNs, it may be that an ISBN was reused on a completely different book. This shouldn't happen because ISBNs are supposed to be unique, but exceptions have been found. If that is the case, manually add a new edition to the database and add the ISBN to this edition in the ISBN field. Remove the ISBN from the older book, and in the Description field, list the ISBN and state that it is an older book and that you are moving the ISBN to the more recently published book. You can also use the Librarian Note feature found near the top of the book edit page to add a note to the book.If that's not clear, please let us know, and we will attempt to clarify further.
Mod
Please don't split up the ISBN10 and ISBN13. They should both be on the same, more recent edition.
MrsJoseph wrote: "Well, I suggest the free labor should stop."I'll happily continue working on other areas of the database. If they start messing with what I love and work most on, I'll quit adding content.
rivka wrote: "Please don't split up the ISBN10 and ISBN13. They should both be on the same, more recent edition. "I won't do so, it's just a suggestion.
I'm fairly confused why people are having such an issue with this.As long as editions are properly combined you will still get all of the editions regardless of which edition has the ISBN/ASIN attached to it when you search.
Cal wrote: "I'm fairly confused why people are having such an issue with this.As long as editions are properly combined you will still get all of the editions regardless of which edition has the ISBN/ASIN at..."
Well for classics that can have hundreds and even thousands of editions it is now even harder to find your edition if you have the older cover with the ISBN and not a newer edition. The editions being properly combined really only helps when there aren't a ton of editions or a librarian adds the proper ACE links.
Cal wrote: "As long as editions are properly combined you will still get all of the editions regardless of which edition has the ISBN/ASIN attached to it when you search. "
Nope. Search by ISBN on Pride and Prejudice. One that doesn't have the ISBN and the ACE isn't cross-referenced. Do you know which edition was published first? Are you going to research it? Have fun!
Miffy wrote: "If ACEs are an issue, to me it doesn’t make sense to move the ISBN. ... The ISBN belongs to the CONTENT not the cover."Absolutely.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Cal wrote: "As long as editions are properly combined you will still get all of the editions regardless of which edition has the ISBN/ASIN attached to it when you search. "
Nope. Search by ISBN o..."
Pride and Prejudice has like a thousand ISBN numbers assigned to it. That type of situation isn't even related to this topic.
This is about books that have multiple editions with the same ISBN for all of them. All of those should be combined under a single entry and the newest version should hold the ISBN.
Cal wrote: "Pride and Prejudice has like a thousand ISBN numbers assigned to it. That type of situation isn't even related to this topic."Yes, it is exactly tied to this topic. Exactly. Publishers reissue editions with the same ISBN. That's what this is about. Now you have to figure out which is the latest with that ISBN and move it to that edition. This is exactly why those of use who do a lot of work on the database don't like this idea.
rivka wrote: "Going forward, ISBNs/ASINs should be moved to the book’s most recent edition released with the same ISBN or ASIN."YAY! Wholehearted approval with a side order of "It's about time!" The old policy made sense in the 20th century, and still might for a minority who collect rare paper editions, but it's 2018 now. Good move!
Cal wrote: "Pride and Prejudice has like a thousand ISBN numbers assigned to it. That type of situation isn't even related to this topic."Just because Pride and Prejudice has a ton of different editions with ISBNs doesn't mean there are no editions where the ISBN has been reused. There are likely dozens of cases of that happening.
Penguin classics for example have a habit of changing the cover image without issuing a new ISBN leading to multiple ISBN-less editions in the database. If a person has the one the ISBN used to be attached to and it is suddenly moved and the librarian chooses not to add an ACE link, then that person will have a very hard time finding their edition.
Melanie wrote: "Penguin classics for example have a habit of changing the cover image without issuing a new ISBN leading to multiple ISBN-less editions in the database. If a person has the one the ISBN used to be attached to and it is suddenly moved and the librarian chooses not to add an ACE link, then that person will have a very hard time finding their edition."THANK YOU
rivka wrote: "Z-squared wrote: "Can I get a clarification about what to do when isbns have been recycled for completely different works?"This is addressed in the updated section of the Manual:
In the other ..."
What if the publication year is missing in one of the books?
P.K. wrote: "YAY! Wholehearted approval with a side order of "It's about time!" The old policy made sense in the 20th century, and still might for a minority who collect rare paper editions, but it's 2018 now. Good move!"
Clearly, SPA, you haven't a clue as to what is happening in your industry. Ebooks sales are doing very well, yes. But DTBs are NOT a minority for collectors.
But I'm not surprised by the SPA reaction. They have lots of harassing readers for feedback in order to re-write their book-babies to do.
Melanie wrote: "Cal wrote: "Pride and Prejudice has like a thousand ISBN numbers assigned to it. That type of situation isn't even related to this topic."Just because Pride and Prejudice has a ton of different e..."
The question is why didn't the librarian combine editions? Had they done that when adding the ACE and moving the ISBN then it would be linked on the page with the original edition.
Granted when you have P&P with nearly 4000 linked editions it can be a pita to find a specific edition but that is going to happen regardless of which edition holds the ISBN.
P.K. wrote: "The old policy made sense in the 20th century, and still might for a minority who collect rare paper editions, but it's 2018 now. Good move! "I don't collect rare paper editions and I fail to see why the old policy was "so 20th century".
As a librarian, I think it's an extremely bad move, one of the worst GR has come up with in the past few years.
Cal wrote: "Melanie wrote: "Cal wrote: "Pride and Prejudice has like a thousand ISBN numbers assigned to it. That type of situation isn't even related to this topic."Just because Pride and Prejudice has a to..."
What you are questioning is "Why hasn't the unpaid volunteers done something?"
And that is [another] part of this issue. Expecting unpaid volunteers to do a ton of work in order for SPAs and publishers to re-use ISBNs but still make this site work.
Theoretically ISBN should be unique but practically it isn't.So maybe GR Should follow reality and it's time to change approach that ISBN on GR must be unique?
I believe that allowing to set same ISBN for different editions of same book (I guess that case when same ISBN is reused for complately different books is very rare) will solve most of problems.
There may be also additional warning displayed to make editor aware that same ISBN is already present in DB or permission to "duplicate" ISBN may be granted only GR librarians.
Right now it is very difficult to spot correct edition if one wants to find specific edition of book (older edion, ACE) which has hundreds of editions and search edition has no ISBN associated.
Cal wrote: "The question is why didn't the librarian combine editions?"The editions are all combined. All 1800+ of them. If you mean merge, them, well, they aren't supposed to be merged.
MrsJoseph wrote: "Cal wrote: "Melanie wrote: "Cal wrote: "Pride and Prejudice has like a thousand ISBN numbers assigned to it. That type of situation isn't even related to this topic."Just because Pride and Prejud..."
It isn't a ton of work. Its like 3 mouse clicks when you are adding newly released edition.
With your original example of Web of the Witch World is doesn't matter where the ISBN is because both editions are already on the same GR page.
I am clearly not understanding something here.
Cal wrote: "that is going to happen regardless of which edition holds the ISBN. "Not if there is a requirement to cross-reference them. But I guess you wouldn't know about that since you asked about combining.
Cal wrote: "Granted when you have P&P with nearly 4000 linked editions it can be a pita to find a specific edition but that is going to happen regardless of which edition holds the ISBN. "The point is, librarians are now expected to do all that extra research and work. Which of the editions is the newest? Was the pub date entered correctly on the edition already in the database? Etc. etc.
Not to mention what is going to happen now when a non-librarian user adds a book with an ISBN that is already in use.
Cal wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "Cal wrote: "Melanie wrote: "Cal wrote: "Pride and Prejudice has like a thousand ISBN numbers assigned to it. That type of situation isn't even related to this topic."Just becaus..."
Trust me, it is work. But you disagree. Whatever. Maybe 3 clicks are too damn much more for me.
And I was using the first DTB I had records for. I'm not at home right now, staring into my library to play "gotcha" with GR.
I pulled up two records of my favorite author. I have thousands of books - but clearly GR is no longer the place to keep any kind of book records.
MrsJoseph wrote: "lethe wrote: "Unsurprisingly, all those in favour so far are Goodreads Authors.Well, I suggest the free labor should stop. "
That's always an option. Another is selectively fulfilling requests. I know if I have just a few moments to fulfill requests, I'll bypass the longer ones (one post requesting replacement covers for multiple titles, for example). For those of you who have never created an ACE (with hyperlinks, because that helps readers find the cover they want), it's a multi-step, time-consuming project. The new policy has just added more complication, more time, more effort.
I have found that the "How hard could it be?" question often comes from those who don't understand the process. I suspect that as more librarians decline to take on ACEs, there will be quite a few people discovering how complex the process really is.
Cal wrote: "I am clearly not understanding something here."No, you're not. New releases are not the problem. Rivka says this is going forward. Well, going forward, some of us might actually work on editions already in the database. Should we do what the manual says to do going forward? Are we supposed to fix what is wrong with the database? Because that's what the most active us do. And this is horrible.
rivka wrote: "Z-squared wrote: "Can I get a clarification about what to do when isbns have been recycled for completely different works?"This is addressed in the updated section of the Manual:
In the other ..."
So we have to MOVE isbns even if it's not an ACE but a totally different book? Just because the other (totally different) book is more recent? This I don't understand: maybe the older book had a lot of editions and the ISBN was very useful to find the right one, and the newest book has just one (so you could easily find it by typing the title as well).
I don't understand: you want to do it for ACE, I'm not sure I agree, but at least it makes some sense (all editions are combined, the ISBN is being transfered to the latest "incarnation" of that edition).
But why older book A is less "worthy" to have the ISBN than newer book B? Just because it was published before?
rivka wrote: "Hi everyone,We’re implementing a policy change to how we record ISBNs and ASINs. As you all know, we have required that a book’s ISBN/ASIN remain with the original edition. If a subsequent editio..."
Ok, my understanding is when we comment, and we write newer edition, or different publisher which as reprinted from the original Goodreads Librarians then will be given the option to add another newer book. Many of the books I read are back from 80's, or from a Publisher who mentions the original publisher but is newer. I think this idea is better, I only want to be sure how it works once we follow the instructions. Thank you.
Moloch wrote: "So we have to MOVE isbns even if it's not an ACE but a totally different book? Just because the other (totally different) book is more recent? This I don't understand"Yes, it's absurd.
P.K. wrote: "YAY! Wholehearted approval with a side order of "It's about time!" The old policy made sense in the 20th century, and still might for a minority who collect rare paper editions, but it's 2018 now. Good move! "I'm sorry that paper editions are rare in the world where you live. In the real world that the rest of us inhabit, paper books are still a plentiful and valuable commodity. I would hope that you didn't mean your slam to be as offensive as it sounds.
I would suggest to those who use GR for book collecting to switch to a database more designed for that, like LibraryThing.As far as cross referencing Amazon... Are you mad? Amazon is not a book database and does not list everything, nor does it have correct information. Please verify your books using WorldCat, which uses data from libraries.
This whole discussion sounds like there is a serious issue in the GR database: ISBN is used as the primary key for a book record.And funnily enough the first thought I got was exactly the same as Debbie above.
This change only makes sense from Amazon's POV. So the ISBN is added to the latest edition? Meaning that every time a new edition is added, someone has to manually fix that? With millions of books there will be lots of new editions. In reality this will almost certainly mean that for many books the ISBN is neither in the oldest nor the latest edition but in one that happened to be latest when the ISBN was "fixed".
Sara Grace wrote: "I would suggest to those who use GR for book collecting to switch to a database more designed for that, like LibraryThing."Yes, LibraryThing is really much better for strictly cataloguing purposes, but it should be said that it's not entirely free (the price is not excessive though).
It also works in a different way than Goodreads, your book records are your own and no one but you can change them (there is not ONE book record for all like here
As someone who gets books from the local used book store, this new policy is probably going to make using this site annoying from now on.
Sara Grace wrote: "I would suggest to those who use GR for book collecting to switch to a database more designed for that, like LibraryThing.As far as cross referencing Amazon... Are you mad? Amazon is not a book d..."
I keep my primary records in Book Collectorz (www.collectorz.com/book).
I still try to use GR on a regular basis because 1) I've been here for 7+ years
and 2) I've made a lot of friends in groups here.
I've already had to remove my primary book records because of the way GR constantly adulterates their records (read: my records).
Now it seems GR can't be trusted to even use for my current year records.
Moloch wrote: "Yes, LibraryThing is really much better for strictly cataloguing purposes, but it should be said that it's not entirely free (the price is not excessive though).It also works in a different way than Goodreads, your book records are your own and no one but you can change them (there is not ONE book record for all like here"
I have a lifetime membership there but I do not use it. It was hard to get used to. And they aren't very helpful there.
I prefer book collectorz as I have an App, a web portal and a desktop edition. All of them are linked so I always have my wishlist at hand.
What made GR easier is the "currently reading" function and the shelves being multi-function. Book Collectorz is more REAL cataloging software so it doesn't do the crowdsourcing stuff.
To buck the trend, I think this kind of makes sense for Kindle books with an ASIN. When Kindle owners have auto-updates turned on, cover, page counts, etc. would get changed on their Kindles anyway, so on a practical level, those covers don't exist in the real world - just on Goodreads shelves. Moving ASINs was already done quite often by Goodreads staff, so changing the policy to conform to the way staff already does things means there's a lot less rule breaking on their parts.
However - it makes less sense for paper editions where there's still a physical object involved.
One thing I'm not happy about is the lack of requirements to add reciprocal ACE verbiage.
Previously, if someone picked an ACE, they knew they were picking an ACE and presumably didn't care about not having the ISBN/ASIN - and if they did care they could note it down somewhere. Now, someone could pick their edition and come back later and not have the ISBN/ASIN listed anymore - and if they're not a librarian, they'd have no way of getting that information. It'd be permanently lost to them with no warning. From a cataloging perspective, this is really, really terrible.
And not having the ASIN/ISBN breaks the links to all the stores - such as Amazon - which then makes it harder to find the book again.
If there were reciprocal links, it'd resolve many of my objections.
If an ISBN appears in multiple versions of a book, then it BELONGS to multiple versions of the book.If that means GR's use of the ISBN as the primary key is a problem, then perhaps GR should explore a solution to THEIR DATABASE PROBLEM.
Sorry but why on earth would anyone care what the latest edition of a book is?
I'm following directions to change the old edition to my newer edition which is causing reader confusion.
to the newer edition.
Nothing happened with this one and another older edition of another book. The new ASIN is B01CSX4WSM I need help.
@38Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Virginia wrote: "The purpose of the community is for readers in general not just book collectors of older editions, people, in general, want to locate the most recent edition of a book they want to..."I agree with Elizabeth's comment!!! Trying to locate by ISBN sometimes drives me up the wall, but I want to be able to do so!
Eva wrote: "I'm following directions to change the old edition to my newer edition which is causing reader confusion."Eva, this is an announcement thread. Please start a new thread for your request.
(Sounds like you mean to set the default edition, which is not necessarily the same issue as moving ASINs.)
Vicki wrote: "Ok, my understanding is when we comment, and we write newer edition, or different publisher which as reprinted from the original Goodreads Librarians then will be given the option to add another newer book. Many of the books I read are back from 80's, or from a Publisher who mentions the original publisher but is newer. I think this idea is better, I only want to be sure how it works once we follow the instructions. Thank you. "From what I understand you saying, you don't understand the process at all. Not a whit. Do you know what an ISBN is? If the ISBN has been re-used, open a new tab. Research whether the edition you are adding is newer or older than the existing edition. You are on your own as to verifying which edition is older/newer, but some suggestions are to look at Amazon or the Publisher's website. Then create a new edition. If the existing edition is the most recent (you already went to the trouble to verify which is which is which), you can leave the ISBNs there. If it is an older edition (who knows? maybe it is maybe it isn't) you can copy the ISBNs from the old edition of the tab you have open, delete them from that edition, and copy them into the new edition. Then leave librarian librarian notes on both editions as to what you did and why. And then you can leave a note on the ACE edition and while not required, it would really really nice if you would cross-reference the editions with links, so someone searching by ISBN can find the one they actually have. (This last sentence isn't new, it's what conscientious librarians have been doing.)
Eva wrote: "I'm following directions to change the old edition to my newer edition which is causing reader confusion. to the newer edition. [bookcover:..."If they have different ASINs this new policy doesn't affect that title.
Since it's obvious to everyone that this policy change was made for the benefit of authors, I think lethe's proposal * could have been a good compromise. In the same way that Goodreads Authors can set the default edition they want, for books by Goodreads Authors the ISBN/ASIN CAN be moved to the newest edition, if they ask. The other books are left alone. Much less work for librarians, authors happy.This could be reasonable, but I don't have much hope.
* https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Sara Grace wrote: "As far as cross referencing Amazon"What? We're talking about cross-referencing the editions with duplicate ISBNs here at Goodreads.
Sara Grace wrote: "Please verify your books using WorldCat, which uses data from libraries. "And frequently has multiple ISBNs per record. That will not help with this policy which is about editions re-using ISBNs.
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Rick wrote: "Seems to me this is a positive change. I don't really understand some of the criticism. If readers aren't looking for..."
Well, I suggest the free labor should stop.