Librarian help - Requests to add page numbers, publication year, Prize Worthy, etc.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Genealogy research is so very fascinating. I have spent many happy hours ancestor hunting.

[Rebekah]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Genealogy research is so very fascinating. I have spent many happy hours ancestor hunting."

and it is soooooo much easier now that we have computers!

[Kathleen (itpdx)]

Could you update the original publication date for By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens? Wikipedia has it listed as 1957. Trying to sort out my PnM list for fall :)

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Got this! Thanks for bring it to our attention. (And hope you are enjoying the planning!)

[Kathleen (itpdx)]

So much fun!

[Rebekah]

This link is incorrect
Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign, June-July 1963 as is the title . The Year should be 1863 not 1963.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Thanks, Rebekah - fixed it!

[Rebekah]

I need help from real world librarians. Here in our compound we have a little "library" which is more like a book exchange. The room is small maybe 8 x 10 feet or a tad more. It is crazy mixed up and I volunteered to help re-organize it. Now I realize there is more to it.

Nobody checks out books. You just go in, door never locked, pick your books, take them home and return them whenever. All the books are used so there is a drop off box for people who want to donate their books so it is mostly paperbacks. I don't want to make it formal or anything but some shelves say "Romance" and even if there are a lot of romance books, it's got a little of everything else too. At one time books were alphabetized by author but I can't figure out why one shelf has only A's and B's and then another shelve has a, b and w on them. Also short story anthologies are alphabetized by one of the authors randomly selected. They are also put in with general fiction and novels.


I need some suggestions.

This is the lay out of the shelves


__________ ___________ _________ _________
door
. . . . . . ___________ __________ ________wall
. . . . . .I____________ __________ _________
. . . . . .A - B fiction
I
I _________ _____________ __________ ________door to cubby


Each bookcase has 6 shelves, not counting tippy-top, that hold an average of 25 books each. The vertical lines (Capital I's) represent the same size bookcases but didn't know how to make it look bigger on computer. So far all I've gotten done is the shelve marked A-B fiction, I'm thinking to continue the fiction, alphabetically, to the right and then around the opposite wall and around the corner to the 2 shelves by the front door.

The other shelves I thought I could use for genres, we have a bit of non-fiction, mostly travel, parenting and cookbooks as well as biographies. We have quite a bit of children's and middle school age books all topsy turvey wherever someone thought they would look best. I was thining about making a shelf just for romance, one for sic-fi &fantasy, and one for mysteries and horrors and if I have enough space, have a shelf for new releases. I also would like to feature some classics. Now here's my prob. I don't know Shut! right now I'm just trying to take books off the shelves, dust them and start putting them back, letter by letter, all the fiction only for now just to try to figure out what is there.

The cubbyhole has no light and you can't really stand upright but is a bit deep and is full of books just dumped in every which way. I am trying to cull any duplicates for right now. But you know how bad I am with the decimal system to figure out genres. How could I find out which books are which genre or how to divide up non-fiction or kids' books?
WWLD? What would a Librarian Do?

[Rosemary]

Don't non-fiction books have their decimal number printed inside them on the copyright page? So if you made a basic list for yourself, like x-x = history etc, you could sort them that way?

I don't know about librarians but most of the used book stores here have the books divided pretty much as you suggest. Dividing fiction into different genres is kind of subjective but I'd say the most common genres that are separated out (after children's) are (1) crime (2) scifi/fantasy (3) very obvious romance like Harlequin - but mostly they don't separate out 'chick lit', probably for fear of being called discriminatory. Some of them separate out 'classics' but that's subjective too unless you do it by publication date.

I guess the question with genres is - do people come in looking for specifically that type of book? Like there are people who only read mysteries, or only read Harlequin romances. Then you save them a lot of time by shelving them separately.

With kids' books I think you will know most of the time just from the blurb on the back, and if in doubt, I would shelve it with the regular fiction.

[Rebekah]

Thanks for your suggestions, Rosemary. I think a lot do read by genre. I come to that conclusion because of the large amounts of books by authors like Grisham, Steele, Braun, T. Brooks and S King for a few examples.
I haven't noticed that many Westerns which kind of surprised me because many here are from Texas.

The kids' books I wanted to separate out because we do have a lot of middle schoolers here, like my twins, that hang out a lot in the Clubhouse where the library is. I want books for them to be easy to find and there are also picture books and Dr Seuss. I'm thinking to put them close to the door to make it easy and encouraging by having them the first to be seen or if Moms want to bring their kids in to find a book. We have a lot of young ones too. This compound is for families.

I was going to do the classics by pub. date and by its popularity on school reading lists, or go by Eastman's Press 100 classics. I was also thinking about picking certain classics to feature on the shelf facing the door or new releases or new movies.

I have a lot of series books, especially for kids. R L Stein, Pullman, Pony Pals, Magic Treehouse as well as Sue Grafton, JamesPatterso and J.D Robb. For grown -ups, I figured I'd just stick them in with the rest of the fiction.

I never thought about decimal on copyright page. Then all I would have to do is learn which numbers mean what.

[Karen Michele]

Here's help with Dewey:

http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/a...

Story collections by multiple authors and other edited works usually have the title as their alphabetical call number:

One author: Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories by Karen Russell
SC RUS

Multiple authors: Zombies Vs. Unicorns
SC ZOM

[Rebekah]

Thanks! Do you ever separate short story anthologies from regular fiction?

[Karen Michele]

I do. I don't separate by genre, but my local public library has a separate mystery area. Go for what the users will like. I also have Biographies in their own section.

[Rebekah]

This library thing is such a big task. I finally got some help though. The worse part, second to all the dust, is that for about every 30 or so books I shelve, I take one out that I want to read and/or match a challenge. Well on the positive side, it makes more space if only temporary. (smile)

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

The most popular version of William Shakespeare's Richard II is Richard II, but Goodreads lists the editor, Roma Gill as the author. Is there a way to get that corrected to William Shakespeare?

[Karen Michele]

I'm pretty new as a Goodreads librarian, but I think I got Richard II fixed. I'm reading it, too!

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Thanks, Karen! Shakespeare now comes up as the author in the add book/author function. I love the current challenge and am reading a mix of Shakespeare's plays and some huge (500-1200 page) books that I've been wanting to read.

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Karen, I just finished reading Richard II, but I see that the edition you corrected to show Shakespeare as author is now separated from all other editions. Since this was the most popular, I'll link my task report to that one, but can someone fix it so they're all together?

[Karen Michele]

Theresa~OctoberLace wrote: "Karen, I just finished reading Richard II, but I see that the edition you corrected to show Shakespeare as author is now separated from all other editions. Since this was the most pop..."

Hmmm- I think that takes a request on the Goodreads Librarians group. Does anyone else know how to do this?

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I combined them, and you should be good to go now.

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Thank you Karen & Elizabeth!

[Kazen]

I'm reading Proper Doctoring by David Mendel and while this edition has the correct original publication date (1984) the NYRB edition does not. :/

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Kazen wrote: "I'm reading Proper Doctoring by David Mendel and while this edition has the correct original publication date (1984) the NYRB edition does not. :/"

This should be fixed now.

[Kazen]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Kazen wrote: "I'm reading Proper Doctoring by David Mendel..."

This should be fixed now."

Thank you so much!

[Kazen]

Sorry to be back so quickly with another request, but The Intellectual Life was originally published in 1873. It's funny - they got it right in the blurb, but wrong in the metadata. Thank you in advance!

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Kazen wrote: "Sorry to be back so quickly with another request, but The Intellectual Life was originally published in 1873. It's funny - they got it right in the blurb, but wrong in the metadata. ..."

As often as you find these things! (and fixed)

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

I just picked up The Unknown Sigrid Undset: Jenny and Other Works by Sigrid Undset from my library. As far as I can find, there was only one edition of this book printed, a hardcover in 2001. The book in my hand has 406 pages, as listed in the San Antonio Library catalog and in several other libraries on WorldCat and other sources. The only version on GR has all the same info, including the IBSN and pub date, but lists 500 pages. That count agrees with Amazon, but I wonder if it's accurate. Can someone check and either correct the page count or add a second edition so I can report my reading correctly? Thanks!

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Theresa~OctoberLace wrote: "I just picked up The Unknown Sigrid Undset: Jenny and Other Works by Sigrid Undset from my library. As far as I can find, there was only one edition of this book printed,..."

Worldcat also reports 406 pages and I have changed it here.

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Thank you, Elizabeth.

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Can someone please correct the original publication date on I, Claudius? GR shows July 31, 7 but as far as I can tell, the original was published in 1934. Thank you.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Theresa~OctoberLace wrote: "Can someone please correct the original publication date on I, Claudius? GR shows July 31, 7 but as far as I can tell, the original was published in 1934. Thank you."

Got it.

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Got it. "

Thank you!

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Could someone please correct the original publication date for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany? My copy shows the original copyright 1961, but GR is showing January 1901, an obvious error.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Theresa~OctoberLace wrote: "Could someone please correct the original publication date for The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany? My copy shows the original copyright 1961, but GR is s..."

That happens when one edition has a bad pub date. Fixed to reflect original pub date of 1960.

[Theresa~OctoberLace]

Thank you, Elizabeth!

[Amanda]

I can't see a page count for The Swimmer, I have a download copy of 12 A4 pages, but all the editions with page counts listed are foreign editions.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Amanda wrote: "I can't see a page count for The Swimmer, I have a download copy of 12 A4 pages, but all the editions with page counts listed are foreign editions."

There doesn't appear to be a published page count for that edition. Were you planning on using this for Two for One?

[Rebekah]

I went to Margaret Walker's author page on Goodreads and I think there must be two Margaret Walker authors that wrote books. I saw a couple of books on her page that don't seem to fit her genre, or even don't fit her life and they were published after her death. Does anyone know the Margaret Walker that wrote Cucumber Sandwiches & Fishnet Tights and Don't Eat the Cat ?

[Rebekah]

Another book that doesn't seem to fit that she is given credit for is Away with the Vicar

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Thanks, Rebekah. I moved those 3 books to a different Margaret Walker, although I don't yet know anything about her.

[Rebekah]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Thanks, Rebekah. I moved those 3 books to a different Margaret Walker, although I don't yet know anything about her."

Not that this helps but I think she must be British as they seem to be about a Yorkshire Vicar's wife

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I haven't looked for anything - I should do that!

[Katy]

I don't know if this is something a librarian can fix, but I just read Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver and the data has it set in MA. However, in the book, it specifically references being in Virginia -- "Boom-a-Rang, Virginia's Largest Firecracker Emporium" on page 201. Never mentions MA in the book.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Katy wrote: "I don't know if this is something a librarian can fix, but I just read Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver and the data has it set in MA. However, in the book, it spe..."

Fixed

[Katy]

Thanks Elizabeth!

[Ed]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this...but wanted to get some advice and ask some questions:

For future challenges, i want to read 1001 Arabian Nights... and i know that the Burton translation is often cited as the most thorough but I have heard that it is also written in outdated English. but it is uncensored. Since there are so many other translations....is there one that others would recommend as more reader-friendly- yet doesn't bowdlerize the stories?

Then as for how reading such editions count in RwS....
What is considered the original publication date? Seems oldie points should apply before the published English translations...but i don't know. Also...most of the translations are published in separate volumes....so, must one read all the volumes...or can one post each volume separately (assuming there is an appropriate category at the time)?
thanks for any help you can offer,
Ed

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Ed wrote: "For future challenges, i want to read 1001 Arabian Nights... "

The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights is the edition (MPE) we have used in previous challenges, with a publication date of 900.

[Ed]

thanks

[Liz M]

Ed wrote: "Is there one that others would recommend as more reader-friendly- yet doesn't bowdlerize the stories?..."

From wiki: Burton's translation "has, however, been criticized for its 'archaic language and extravagant idiom' and 'obsessive focus on sexuality'." And "A notable recent version...is a critical edition based on the 14th or 15th-century Syrian manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, originally used by Galland. This version...was compiled in Arabic by Muhsin Mahdi (1984) and rendered into English by Husain Haddawy (1990)."

I read the Haddawy translation (The Arabian Nights) and enjoyed it. At only 500-ish pages it gives the flavor of the work and includes many of the most well-known stories.

[Ed]

thanks Liz

Liz M wrote: "Ed wrote: "Is there one that others would recommend as more reader-friendly- yet doesn't bowdlerize the stories?..."

From wiki: Burton's translation "has, however, been criticized for its 'archaic..."