Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Amy, If the books have an ISBN I'd think they'd already be in the Goodreads data base. Or are they not there because of the lack of an author being designated?
The books are not there because of the lack of author. But if you do an ISBN search on Amazon, they show up (minus any author information). And I'm not a big enough fan of Amazon to make corrections on that site. For other (mainly older) books, the author, title, cover, publisher, etc are all available via Amazon but will not add to goodreads due to no ISBN.
And I'm kind of curious how the goodreads database works - does it import all Amazon books (with valid ISBN and author), or does it only import on a 'demand' basis? From my observations it seems to import only if no item is found already in the goodreads database, and then only if ISBN and author are present. All of the NOT A BOOK items probably come from key word or title searches? (Or maybe are entered intentionally by users....?)
Amy, It imports all new I do believe, including plenty of items NOT BOOKS. Dolls & note cards & calendars, etc. but the author and ISBN fields are filled.
I see your dilemma.
Here's an example; amazon has a lot of information about this book, but it will not add (no author):http://www.amazon.com/Pure-And-Untouc...
Amy, Well, maybe Goodreads can do something on a per request basis; I don't know. If it consoles you at all, I've had to manually add many old books that are not in the Amazon data base at all. But I'm wishing you luck that something can be worked out to make it easier for you.
I understand why in general you do not allow easy import of books with no author or ISBN.
And although I'm a little embarrassed to use this illustration, here's my example of when it would be helpful:
I have been entering my collection of Barbara Cartland books. For some reason, many of these books do not have an author listed in Amazon (maybe because Barbara Cartland is listed in the title). But they have a good ISBN, pictures, descriptions, etc. In this case, I have to do a manual entry for the book, and also upload the picture.
A librarian tool which would allow me to get what information is in Amazon automatically would make this much easier. And I think that librarians would use it wisely.
Does anyone have any suggestions on easier ways to handle these situations? I have been known to make really easy jobs incredibly difficult, so any help is appreciated.