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Questions (not edit requests) > (answered) Bot created garbled book record: Report or Fix?

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message 1: by Mesembryanthemum (last edited Apr 11, 2023 02:44PM) (new)

Mesembryanthemum | 195 comments A few days ago, the amazon_catalog bot created a garbled book record for "P is for Peril". There's no ISBN, just an ASIN that doesn't exist today on amazon.com. See Work ID 126825718.

Should I leave the entry alone and report the problem to GR Support?

Or should I assume that this was a one-off problem and try to fix this entry? (If, that is, I can figure out what ISBN it is supposed to have.)


Mesembryanthemum | 195 comments Correction: ASIN B00DWWHE48 does exist on Amazon (oops). It didn't appear with an Amazon search, but DuckDuckGo found it.

However, it's just that same garbled "book" listing.

https://www.amazon.com/Peril-Grafton-...


message 3: by Scott (new)

Scott | 8765 comments You could fix it and also flag the edit.


message 4: by Mesembryanthemum (last edited Apr 11, 2023 02:53PM) (new)

Mesembryanthemum | 195 comments I guess my bigger question is: How should librarians handle the incorrect or incomplete GR book records that bots seem to be creating in ever-increasing numbers? Should we report a bot-created problem entry to Support, or just fix problems as we find them?


message 5: by Scott (new)

Scott | 8765 comments Actually it's probably a duplicate of an existing mmpb, so you can mark it invalid. But I would still report the bot activity. I've been seeing a lot of these "unknown author" records lately.


message 6: by Scott (new)

Scott | 8765 comments If it's not a duplicate, I'd fix it. Flag as many as you can be bothered to flag; maybe something will eventually get done.


Elizabeth (Alaska) Mesembryanthemum wrote: "I guess my bigger question is: How should librarians handle the incorrect or incomplete GR book records that bots seem to be creating in ever-increasing numbers? Should we report a bot-created prob..."

I see dozens of them everyday. I neither fix nor report. The reason I don't is because a couple of months (or 3?) ago, I reported one. I had separated the edition with the ASIN and the matching ISBN. I reported the edition with which they should be recombined after the merge. The staff person didn't understand what I was reporting, took 4 days to do nothing, by which time another librarian had recombined those editions I had taken the extra time to separate. GR seems not to mind this garbage and I figure those extra editions aren't actually hurting anything so I leave them.


Mesembryanthemum | 195 comments Thanks for the helpful information. I hadn't realized that I could flag the original creation. (I'm a newbie who's still learning the basics.)

For this one, I'll flag it & mark it as invalid, because now I have my teeth into it (i.e., it's bugging me). Also, I'd like to practice these tasks on something unimportant simple.

But I suspect I will quickly change to the strategy of leaving these types of records unfixed, because there are so many of them. There are other things I'd rather spend my librarian time on. And, as Elizabeth (Alaska) said, it seems that GR doesn't mind if they're in the database.


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