Multi-Shelf Searching

[James]

I may be missing something obvious and welcome the opportunity to get red-faced, but satisfied. I've searched and searched and can't even find reference to this possibility.

For example, say that I wanted to search for all books that share the Bookshelves: "steampunk" and "amazon" and "gardening"... is this possible? I mean, it should be. But I'm stumped.

Also, since I'm bringing up searches, why is the Goodreads search box so disgustingly crappy? One time, my search came up empty. Know why? Because the title has a subtitle and Goodreads did it, like this:

TITLE: subtitle

but I entered

TITLE subtitle

I missed the colon, so Goodreads said the book didn't exist. Even worse? The colon wasn't on the book jacket. Just the title up top and the subtitle, down at the bottom.

It feels like a search engine from about ten years ago.

[Cheryl]

In My Books, under your list of shelves on the left rail, there is a tiny link that says 'select multiple' -- it puts little clickable + marks next to each shelf title in the list. Hitting it again searches for books that are on all the shelves chosen: so you'd get books that are *both* gardening and steampunk shelves (iow, probably none). It's an intersection.

If you want all books that are gardening *and* all books that are steampunk (maybe you're giving someone a wishlist of your current passions), you're out of luck. GR knows we want this badly.

GR also knows search sucks. They have promised improvements for years. Meanwhile, lots of ppl search via google and then come back in.

In your example, I, personally, would use my volunteer librarian status to change the edition I cared about to remove the colon. The editions of the book would still be combined, so a search with, or a search without, the colon would both lead to the same book page. Send me a PM if you want details, or if you want me to make that happen.

[YouKneeK]

Cheryl wrote: "In My Books, under your list of shelves on the left rail, there is a tiny link that says 'select multiple'"

Awesome, I didn’t even know this option existed on Goodreads.

I would just add that the “select multiple” option doesn’t seem to show up if you’re under “All”. You have to select one of your shelves first. I usually default to "All" so when I went to My Books, I couldn't find the option. I even hit Ctrl+F and my browser confirmed it wasn't there. But, when I switched to my “read” shelf on a whim, I finally saw what you were talking about.

I guess the theory is that, if we’re under “all”, then we want to see all our books so why give us the option to select multiple shelves? But all that does is make a near-invisible option even harder to find.

[Don]

James, the important thing is knowing the limitations of the situation.

[James]

Cheryl wrote: "In My Books, under your list of shelves on the left rail, there is a tiny link that says 'select multiple' -- it puts little clickable + marks next to each shelf title in the list. Hitting it agai..."

I swear I'm not normally this clueless, but here's a pic of the left side of the screen, in My Books. I can't find "Select multiple".

[James]

As far as I can see, that only lists shelves that are basic or that I create, so multiple searching would only multiple search my shelves.

I'm looking for the ability to search the entire site, based on multiple shelves. In other words, all books that share shelves X, Y, and B.

[James]

Don wrote: "James, the important thing is knowing the limitations of the situation."

Which I don't, yet. Because I'm missing something.

[James]

Now there's a "select multiple" (I assume because I added a test shelf), but it's faded out and does nothing when I click it.

I don't need the ability to multi-shelf search the books that I already know about. I need the ability to multi-search books that I've never heard of.

[James]

To help clarify:

For example, just for the hell of it, I just went over to IMDb and searched for all movies that deal with tags (their version of shelves) "anthropologist", "based on a novel" and "sci-fi". That gave me this list of 4 movies that were all based on novels, all dealt with anthropologists and all were sci-fi.


That's the kind of search I'm looking for and I'm kind'a surprised if it's not here.

[Cheryl]

Oh. Since we at GR don't even actually have community-wide shelves at all, I assumed you were indeed looking for a way to see your own books in different configurations.

How do you even see the unknown steampunk books?

Our "genres" are the closest things to shelves we have, at GR. They are more like 'tags' than shelves, really. But they're not really helpful, and I almost never use them. Here's the thing:

We didn't used to have them. Then GR decided we needed a recommendation engine. To find data for that to use, they pulled 'genre' 'tags' via crowd-sourcing from members' shelves. That is to say, (though I don't know the fine details) if a bunch of ppl marked The Martian Chronicles as SF, it would be classified as SF.

Trouble is, 1. as I said before, these genres don't function like shelves, and aren't effectively searchable, and 2. they're ridden w/ error... for example, lots of members evidently shelved their SF books as 'Science.' This means that SF books and non-fiction science books often show up mixed together.

[Cheryl]

Yup, you found another flaw in GR. Again, lots of folks cope by using google and coming back in.

However, you do have at least three other possible strategies.

You could use Listopia. Someone may well have created a Listopia that includes among its tags 'anthropologist' and 'sci-fi.'

You could create a thread in groups of interest. For example you could, here, create a thread asking members to suggest books that are SF and are about anthropologists.

You could go (offsite) to worldcat.org and search by tags.

[James]

I created a default Google search that can

check which books share shelves.

All you have to do is add shelves, at the beginning.