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Questions (not edit requests) > Check if book has been deleted?

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message 1: by Drace (last edited Jul 15, 2024 02:10PM) (new)

Drace (dracenines) | 7373 comments Kind of an odd request, but one I'd very much appreciate help with.

Is there any way a librarian can check to see if a specific edition of a book has been mistakenly deleted? I was looking for the first edition hardcover of the book The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster, but it doesn't have a Goodreads page. I know sometimes the bot deletes perfectly valid editions by mistake, so I wanted to see if that might have happened here.

The book's ISBN-13 is 9780805054088. It's worth a mention that the ISBN-10, 0805054081, is assigned to another edition as an ASIN, but since that edition's page was automatically created by the Goodreads bot just last year and the book was first published in 2002, I believe the bot may have deleted a previously existing edition and then created a new edition using the ISBN-10 as the ASIN.

Many thanks to whoever can help with this.


message 2: by Renske (new)

Renske | 12220 comments You can find deleted editions in the same way you can find invalid editions, try adding the ISBN to that other edition and see if you get the error message with the link to the edition.


message 3: by Drace (new)

Drace (dracenines) | 7373 comments I am not a librarian and do not have the ability to add ISBNs to editions, which is why I am asking librarians to check. I don't have the ability to do it myself.


message 4: by Renske (new)

Renske | 12220 comments Sorry, the 'is there any way' made me think you were looking for the how to do it.

The answer is there is an edition that was indeed deleted which had that ISBN13 listed, but it was changed by a bot. But 0805054081 is there still listed as ISBN10. I will send a message to the staff to move the ISBN.


message 5: by Drace (new)

Drace (dracenines) | 7373 comments Renske wrote: "Sorry, the 'is there any way' made me think you were looking for the how to do it.

The answer is there is an edition that was indeed deleted which had that ISBN13 listed, but it was changed by a b..."


Is it not possible to un-delete the edition that the bot deleted?


message 6: by Renske (new)

Renske | 12220 comments I have changed that one back to public, but the numbers on that book are now a mix of two different ISBN pairs, so something needs to be moved.


message 7: by Drace (new)

Drace (dracenines) | 7373 comments Gotcha. Thanks for the explanation.

If there's any chance you can let me know when staff's fixed the problem and drop a link to the new edition, it would be very much appreciated.


message 8: by Renske (new)

Renske | 12220 comments Here is the edition with your ISBN https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
And this was the other edition that originally had them https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...


message 9: by Drace (new)

Drace (dracenines) | 7373 comments Thanks for your help!


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