Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Questions (from Librarians only)
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Question about invalid records
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Always look at the change log. In both these instances, the log shows the record was imported by an Amazon bot as a 9-book collection of paperbacks with an ASIN. That indicates a collection of 9 separate books being sold as a collection by a third-party vendor. Therefore, it is not a valid record for adding to the catalog. It should be marked as Invalid.The second record was imported under the same circumstances. It has been correctly marked as Invalid.
All items sold by Amazon are assigned an ASIN - Amazon Standard Identification Number - that is unique for that product. It used to be that only Kindle and Audible Audio records had ASINs imported by the Amazon bot. When the bots started importing everything with an ASIN, it created chaos in the Goodreads records. We are still cleaning these up as they are found.
Non-book items (t-shirts, keychains, etc) are easy to spot. Check the change log when you find a printed book with an ASIN and no ISBN. Books that were never assigned an ISBN might be correctly imported with an ASIN; check for duplicates in the edition records. If you're unsure, ask for a second opinion, as you've done here.
Before becoming a librarian, I received conflicting information on what constitutes an invalid book, with very similar records being treated differently.
For example, this is a records I was suspicious of: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... (publication date before the date some individual items were published, "generic" publisher, no ISBN). But I was told it was valid because it had an AISN.
Whereas this record, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2..., was very similar but marked invalid.
The librarian manual seems to focus mostly on items that are invalid due to invalid item type, instead of invalid records of otherwise valid books, and I wanted to make sure I was clear on the standard when working on records.