Can book records with a valid ISBN ever be deleted?

[Lauren]

I'm looking through the books authored by Livy, and so, so, so many of them—easily 1/2 to 2/3—look like this:

- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

No ratings, no reviews, no user activity, computer-generated cover, unintelligible or missing descriptions, and often mistakes (strange non-character symbols inserted etc.) in the titles. They seem to be mainly published by Wentworth Press and Forgotten Books.

However, they do have a valid ISBN.

Does Goodreads policy allow these records to be deleted given that there is no user activity (ie, if I compiled a list of these, would a Librarian be able to delete them)?

The digital clutter is astonishing to the point that it seems like spam, and the amount of time it would take to clean up (as in, correct the titles, make the descriptions legible, etc.) the records for even one author (I see this sort of thing on the profiles of many classic authors, not just Livy) would be prohibitive.

[lethe]

Jennifer wrote: "Does Goodreads policy allow these records to be deleted given that there is no user activity (ie, if I compiled a list of these, would a Librarian be able to delete them)?"

No. Published books should never be deleted. It doesn't matter if anyone has shelved them.

Lots of classics that are now in the public domain are being published in a multitude of new editions by these kind of publishers, and yes, their records tend to look awful. My advice would be to try practising looking the other way ;)