ACE dates clarification please

[Brad]

If I'm adding an ACE on May 6th 2024 do I enter the date as May 6th 2024 even though the cover may have been released before today's date? Request may be weeks old.

The topic "Reminders to librarians fulfilling add-book requests" seems to say this but wanted to confirm this is correct.
Thanks in advance

[gem]

The Librarian's Manual says: "Note: The publication date for an alternate-cover edition should be the date the book was released with the new cover, not the date the book with that ISBN or ASIN was originally published."

I think the post you are referencing assumes that you are adding an ACE with a known publication date. However, for many books the new cover date might be unknown. For example, on Amazon the publication date is normally the book's original release date, and there's no way to figure out when the cover was updated. (I even contacted Amazon customer service about it once and they were so confused by what I was asking. 😅)

I usually set the date to the month and year of the poster's original request, but keep in mind that is not necessarily accurate either because the cover may have been changed long before anyone noticed and posted on GR.

I personally would not add the numeric date unless I knew for sure it was the release date. So from your example of May 6 2024, I would just add May 2024. And if the request is from April 2024, I would use that instead.

Hope this helps and I'm interested to see how other Librarians handle this.

[Tal]

gem wrote: "Hope this helps and I'm interested to see how other Librarians handle this."

Back when I added quite a few ACE's, and even now when I see ACE's have been added that default to the 1st of whatever month they were created with the ACE tool, I either contacted the author directly to find out when they uploaded the new covers or checked their social media accounts for the new cover release announcements. I always got a response from authors I contacted so that was pretty reliable.

@Brad, I find that leaving the default date of Month, 1, year populated makes an ACE easier to spot so if you were to edit the day to the date you created that ACE it would be harder for a regular user to identify them and slightly misleading because it would look like a legitimate pub date even though it isn't. When the ACE tool was launched I read the instructions as gem said above, leave the default date created by the tool and only edit it if you have a known pub date to enter.

[Brad]

Tal wrote: "gem wrote: "Hope this helps and I'm interested to see how other Librarians handle this."

Back when I added quite a few ACE's, and even now when I see ACE's have been added that default to the 1st ..."
Ah, so the tool sets the date anyway! I thought that might be the case but the passage in the manual made me think I was wrong. I've been back and checked a few I did and yes, they are all set to the 1st of the month I added them.

Many thanks Gem & Tal

[Martin]

They should set to month and year only, I'm fairly certain the day is not set automatically.

[Tal]

Martin wrote: "They should set to month and year only, I'm fairly certain the day is not set automatically."

On GR date fields when you only enter a month/year it defaults to the 1st. It's been that way for as long as I've been on GR. You can see this on an ACE you created earlier today -> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

notice the pub date under This Edition is "Published May 1, 2024 by Heatherly Bell Books"

p.s. If you only enter a year and no month, it defaults to January 1st.

[Martin]

Yes, I was thinking about the date automatically set on the editing page - that has no day.
The January 1 default on the front-end display really irritated me at first but I have trained myself not to see it now.

[gem]

Martin wrote: "The January 1 default on the front-end display really irritated me at first but I have trained myself not..."

Same. I'd rather it showed just the information available than a date that's misleading or wrong.

[Brad]

It's certainly odd but I think I'll just stick to letting the tool choose the date unless it's an old request or I know for sure when the cover was changed.