Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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List of books banned from Goodreads
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There is no such list for librarians. Legal issues are handled by the staff, not the librarians.
I understand it is the staff doing the banning, but they must communicate it in some form, right? How do librarians then know what book they must not add to Goodreads because they are banned from Goodreads by the staff?
As we can't add the same ISBN/ASIN twice to the database, preventing the addition of a specific edition isn't hard for the staff.If there was a public list of banned titles, it would certainly lead to a lot of discussion about which titles are on it or not, so I think that wouldn't be helpful to have public.
If you have questions/concerns about a specific book, you should contact the staff.
I'm not sure how it's our problem. If it's a legitimate book, add it. If they remove it later that's on them.
Please consider this a purely academical question: How many of these books with the following ISBN are banned from Goodreads in a way you cannot add them? If they are not banned, would you add them?9780937944042
9780692943656
9781291531398
9780692943656
9781911417262
9780692943656
9780937944097
9780937944127
9781326195908
9781911417361
9781569803929
9788882483135
9781911417569
9781733648127
9781648589294
9781911417576
9781733648158
J_BlueFlower wrote: "Please consider this a purely academical question: How many of these books with the following ISBN are banned from Goodreads in a way you cannot add them? If they are not banned, would you add them..."Out of a few random ones I tried I could only identify one (others were NOT A BOOK). In principle I think any real book should be able to be added and GR should take a neutral stance on the grounds that it is a database.
Can you see any reason given for why they were banned? As far as I can read the Librarian Manual they are valid.
J_BlueFlower wrote: "Can you see any reason given for why they were banned? As far as I can read the Librarian Manual they are valid."If you want reasons, you would need to talk to staff.
https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta...
If you want the books added you need to post in the adding new books folder following this template.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
One book per thread is recommended. But if staff has deleted/marked a book as invalid we literally can't reverse that.
J_BlueFlower wrote: "Can you see any reason given for why they were banned? As far as I can read the Librarian Manual they are valid."The only title I recognised was The Turner Diaries. If you look it up it's clear why GR would want to ban it, even though it is a novel.
To summarize: Librarians do not know how many or what books have been banned from Goodreads by the staff. They can discover if a book has been banned by the ISBN being blocked. There is no—or at least no commonly know—list of books banned from Goodreads.
J_BlueFlower wrote: "... They can discover if a book has been banned by the ISBN being blocked. ..."Incorrect. If a book status has been changed to "Deleted" or "Invalid," all we as volunteer librarians can determine is who made the change. Sometimes there is a Librarian Note with an explanation, but often there is not. If a Goodreads employee has marked the book as "Deleted" or "Invalid," we would have to contact Support to ask why the decision was made. There are several reasons an employee might mark a book as "Deleted" or "Invalid," including but not limited to author request due to legal issues. We have no way of knowing what the reasons are, other than asking for clarification.
As an example, see this request:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Deletion/Invalidation of a book from the database does not categorically mean that it's been banned. Volunteer librarians are not included in staff decisions regarding edition status of books.
Dobby wrote: "J_BlueFlower wrote: "Deletion/Invalidation of a book from the database does not categorically mean that it's been banned."Especially not now, with the bots deleting stuff randomly.
Scott wrote: "...bots deleting stuff randomly."Wow! What is going on? That sounds "lovely"
Dobby wrote: "As an example, see this request:..https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
"
Thank you. I never heard about someone publishing AI "books" under someone else's name... And the author name spelled in two different ways on the cover (Flames Of First Dawn)....
J_BlueFlower wrote: "Scott wrote: "...bots deleting stuff randomly."Wow! What is going on? That sounds "lovely""
Yes, frequently someone will post about a book they are reading or had previously shelved being marked invalid. Of course it is up to librarians to fix it all.
We're just volunteers who don't have time to fix everything. There is no such thing as a list of banned books that I've heard of. I can and have added any book I was asked to unless it's an ISBN that's already there. Then I can look at that book and see it exists. The only thing I know of that has been removed is one you mentioned which is The Turner Diaries. I'm confused as to why when so many other offensive books are here including The Anarchist's Cookbook or Mein Kampf as they should be. But I'd bet money this is Amazon, not GR staff. We're an Amazon company. If they've banned it on their site, they'd ban it here, too.
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I assume you people have access to such a list, since you must know what books not to create in the database, when people ask.