Importing Onix Descriptions

[Greg]

Hello Librarians!

My name is Greg and I am an Intern at Goodreads and I wrote a script to import book descriptions from publishers.

Why are we doing this?
The terms for the Onix imported data is a lot better than the terms for Amazon or Barnes and Noble's imported data. This mean that we can use the data in the mobile apps and also give it out through our API.

When will this happen?
I will be starting the import tomorrow (6/22) morning at around 10:30.

What descriptions are being overwritten?
We are only importing descriptions that are from Penguin Group USA. We will not overwrite user reviews because we love your reviews! We will only be overwriting reviews that are provided by Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

How are we importing?
Basically the Publishers provide a file that lists the books that they have published and the data that is related to that book. We are going through that file and overwriting only the descriptions that we got from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. We are not overwriting the descriptions that are from users.

Just wanted to give you a warning so you know about this!


-Greg

[Beth]

Thanks, Greg!

[mlady_rebecca]

If a librarian modifies an Amazon or B&N blurb, does that turn it into a "user created" description?

The main thing I was thinking of was anthologies. A lot of times librarians add the names of all the individual stories in a given anthology. I would hate to see that information destroyed. I know I've added that information to books that I no longer own.

[Greg]

I will test this out tomorrow morning before I run the onix description importer and make sure that those will not be overwritten. Thanks for thinking of that!