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Amazon is going away as a data source
Brian wrote: "Sara ♥ wrote: "Maybe I just have strange editions... It seems like the more popular the book is (i.e. the more editions), the harder it is to find good info on WorldCat..."I've tried going to the..."
Not effective if you include the "-buy" because some publishers are the sellers, particularly for indie and self-pub works and even a whole genre, e.g. romance.
I don't think that's going to be a problem for ME, but good point... I've mostly got a bunch of strange versions of the Lemony Snicket books, for some reason... And Winnie the Pooh... Yeah. I guess that probably says a lot about me, but whatever! ;) Someone has to save these books, right? :)
Hi, everyone! Besides World Cat, I was able to find a bunch of really obscure books from my shelves on this website:http://library.sc.edu/spcoll/rarebook...
Hope this is helpful.
Brian wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Sorry but I have to be honest here. This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. Love goodreads and it's helped me reach a larger audience BUT!!!Your getting the open source ..."
Thanks for writing me back. I just had to say something. I'm not only a novelist but I also own a dvd company and Ingram is one of the lowest buying distribution companies I work with.
Make sure you have a back up plan because I know their doing really bad right now.
Just had to say something because I love Goodreads and don't want it to get screwed up because Ingram is hanging by a thread.
Stephen, hopefully GR learned from their experiences, so their contract with Ingram includes being allowed to keep data should Ingram go belly-up.
Well, my rescue list has gone down from 151 to 121, but I'm not sure how much I should expect, because most of them are Spanish editions.
rivka wrote: "… that means Amazon acknowledges you as the source of the image, and cannot go after you for using them elsewhere."I might be wrong, but it seems to me that the whole affair is the result of the SOPA bombscare notice.
As far as I understand, every person who has added as much as the bibliographical data (or, God forbid, a tiny image with a low resulution) now runs the risk of being prosecuted by Amazon, or any other Internet source, publisher, or whoever that claims the right to these data.
Can the law (or contract) fire backwards? I mean why should the info that got into Goodreads BEFORE the contract is stopped be either deleted or prosecuted? I thought it was the AFTER that mattered.
SOPA is a seprate topic for discussion, but my suggestion is what if Goodreads doesn't carry the info about editions at all and provides the titles only? "War and Peace" will be "War and Peace" whoever, whenever and however publishes it.
The next suggestion is accepting only DSCNjpg files (or similar files), which shows that a person has photographed the physical copy of the book he/she owns. (Though as far as I understand, this might also be a pretext for legal prosecution?)
Can now WE be prosecuted for the images originally taken form Amazon or some other Internet source?
I'm not yet exactly bitching (as some here think, though this last-time rescue key-in party took 13 hours of my "self-important" life and a huge mess in my flat with all my library shelves gutted + putting the books back again + a huge row with other inhabitants of the flat because they had no stepping space on the floor), but when doing something, I just have to know WHY I'm doing it, and what is in store for me.
So the 3 typical Russian questions apply to the present situation: What's to be done? Who's to blame (for the data and the images)? How should we go about putting things in order (legally, as well)?
About half my books are on my rescue list, presumably because they are British editions, not American. Does this mean we won't be able to add books by ISBN after the switch? I know at present that the barcode scan will only work for editions that are already on Goodreads so this will become redundant for non-Americans if this is the case. I am going to rescue all my British editions at the weekend but I'm not looking forward to manually entering books in the future (and what about non-librarians?).
Ellie, non-librarians can still enter books manually - they just can't combine them with existing editions.
I don't understand Otis' message about international editions. If sources are going to be added on next months, but on January 30th all the books who have Amazon as source are going to merge in a huge bag with no data, how are you going to recover them? And how are the ratings going to be kept? I'm talking about books which can be deleted, not merged.
I've written down the name wrong. I was talking about Patrick's message, and my concerns come from it. Sorry about the mistake. At that message, it looks like reviews will be associated to some data which will allow to recover them later. But, if title and author can be kept, perhaps if it's a recent book (with ISBN) you can do it. But without ISBN? Devil's advocate here, I think none of my books are so old.
Mod
I know you said that my reviews wouldn't be deleted, but what happens if I reviewed a book and it doesn't get rescued?
First, let me repeat, your reviews and ratings really won't be deleted. There's a good chance that we will get data for your book from Ingram or the Library of Congress. If neither of those things happen, and you can't find a copy of the book or a valid source for data, then that particular book might be removed, which means that your review or rating would be temporarily moved to a blank edition without an author or title, where they will be stored until we can find a new source for data for that book, which we're confident we can do for every book in the catalog.
I just googled Ingram, and I see an Ingram Book Company AND an Ingram Entertainment... Are you sure it's the same company? They don't LOOK related to me, although I think they're both based in Tennesse... Huh. Of course, I only browsed their websites for a couple minutes...Also, about the post above mine... It sounds TO ME like they'll be able to keep the ISBN and your attached reviews/ratings/etc., but there won't be a title or author associated with the work until new data is acquired. I don't know how this will affect your ability to see the book on your shelves... Maybe if we could see them, we could continue "saving" them based on ISBN only (and our reviews, etc.)?
Stephen wrote: "Thanks for writing me back. I just had to say something. I'm not only a novelist but I also own a dvd company and Ingram is one of the lowest buying distribution companies I work with..."Hi Stephen - we hear you about backup plans. That's been top of mind.
You will also be happy to hear that the Ingram we are getting our data from is not Ingram Entertainment, which you deal with in the DVD world. Ingram Content Group (where we get our data) is a different company. It is one of the largest (if not largest) and most respected book distributors. When you buy a book, whether it be from your local bookstore or from Amazon, there's a good chance Ingram supplied the book.
I think the Ingram name comes from a single successful Ingram family in TN, but I'm not sure of all the details. The two companies are not related today, however.
Rivka, I think what most people are concerned about is how will that "blank edition" be identified afterwards if it really is completely blank.My assumption (from a programmer's POV) is that if Goodreads aren't even allowed to keep ISBN (or if it's a book old enough not to have an ISBN), all books will still be identified by some sort of guid (unique id) in the database - a guid that stores no information about the book whatsoever for a lay person, but which will enable programmers to later match the "blank" edition to the data gathered from other sources.
True, Maria—every book does have a unique GR number... Interesting.
Hi all, I had a look yesterday 446 books out of my 470 were at risk and today is 418, I'm fearing the worse...
I don't really have the time now to rescue my books but I do have one question. Goodreads allow me to export my books. In that export, there is the GR number. Can it be poossible to reimport that export based on the GR number after the amazon clean?
Covers I can handle later on at my own pace.
Thanks and have a nice day,
Patrice
Maria wrote: "Rivka, I think what most people are concerned about is how will that "blank edition" be identified afterwards if it really is completely blank.My assumption (from a programmer's POV) is that if G..."
The problem is that it's an internal id, so unless you retain some info which allow to match it with the outer world, it's of no use for later add. I suppose that the key is: "no external access to that info".
BTW, I've found some curious books in need of rescuing. Those are books with only title and ISBN. No other detail. I'm sure they come from my initial import from anobii. How can I explain that a book with no info aside of the included in my initial csv is provided by amazon?. An example here: Mi Valeroso Caballero
What about French books ???? My rescue list is still HUGE ! It was 1400+ yesterday and now it's still around 1200+ books ! I'll never have time to save them all if they're not import from a database... I'm feeling a little bit depressed I must admit...
Does anyone here know some Japanese? I have ONE book I need to save that "might be deleted"... (And, okay, it MIGHT be one of the volumes of Twilight in Japanese that my mom bought me when she went to Japan, but please help anyway!) I don't read Japanese AT ALL. Can anyone help me with that?http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64...
If anyone needs help with Korean, though, I know enough to get by on here... With Google Translate's help... :)
It looks like Twilight according to google translate
Ummmm... yes it is. I was being "funny" because Twilight is so unpopular these days... I can't remember which volume it is. My mom bought two: my sister got the Bella one and I got the Edward one.EDIT: Just kidding. It says "1" in the title. That's the only part I can read.
vicki_girl wrote: "Brian wrote: "vicki_girl: we'd have to check, but the most likely reason is that the publication date for this edition is actually earlier than the original publication date stored on the work the ..."okay, i think i've identified the problem....it has to do with when your edits were originally made. i skipped librarian logs older than a certain point because it didn't look like the logs were formatted properly to determine which fields changed. but it appears i didn't go far back enough. your edits look like they should be stored appropriately in the db...
so i'll probably rerun the script to try to pull in the affected edits (it's about 500,000 book edits that might be affected out of many millions).
thanks for pointing it out!
Dear GR, could you please arrange some data import thing with the German National Library (http://www.d-nb.de/eng/index.htm)? This would solve most problems with endangered German editions.
Ugggh... I'm down to 19 (from 160ish), but it's almost 4 am, so I'm crashing. Good luck all you people on the other side of the world! See you tomorrow!
We're putting together a list of websites of Italian publishers that could be useful for data:http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...
Cara wrote: "Dear GR, could you please arrange some data import thing with the German National Library (http://www.d-nb.de/eng/index.htm)? This would solve most problems with endangered German editions."
I second that request.
All 'my' german books are in there, too. Would be a great relief to know GR can easily import them so I can concentrate on the rest of my list.
It's nice that you lot have worked through the night saving lovely books, I'm just getting up. Couple of questions.1) The import from Ingram (never heard of them) will they have details that cover British prints of books? Most of mine are endangered of merging with the US versions.
2) After all the commotion is done, will somebody be checking all the data for missing covers etc? Seems a huge job.
3) presumably books I have endangered will be on other peoples lists too, if they save them will they disappear from my list? Not all the ones I'm saving are disappearing.
Guys, thanks for all the hard work, I love GR and chat to friends nightly, that I would never have met but for this site.
Maria wrote: "Rivka, I think what most people are concerned about is how will that "blank edition" be identified afterwards if it really is completely blank."This. Any replacement phrase (even if it is the same for all books) would be better than nothing at all as librarians could fix things themselves rather than waiting for over-worked Goodreads staff to stumble across a book database with the correct info.
Anyway, the massive data-fix seems to be going quite quickly today. My list is getting lower at about 10-50 books per hour. That's good! I'd still love to know when they expect to finish though so I know exactly when to start panicking. :)
I think Patrick said in an earlier post, where he had a HUGE amount of information, that it would be the end of the week, Angela:)
Hmf. I'm having to "rescue" all kinds of books that were never imported from Amazon, I'm sure. Out of print paperbacks of Dutch language novels, no way these were imported from Amazon, so why I have to retype all that info is beyond me.
Actually, I'm not going to do it. Life's too short.
Frank, a lot of Dutch language novels were imported from the German Amazon, alas. And I'm still not expecting them to be part of the big import, so yeah, the Dutch language editions seem doomed.For Dutch editions I recommend the following for source URLS:
http://zoeken.bibliotheek.be
http://www.kbr.be/catalogues/catalogu...
http://www.kb.nl/
I'm really hoping GR could make a deal with one of these, and I believe the first one already has an export feature.
Another source suggestion (particularly for UK users) is the British Library Catalogue at http://explore.bl.uk/ which should have everything published in the UK and Ireland (at least in the last century) and plenty more as well.
Frank wrote: "Actually, I'm not going to do it. Life's too short."To be honest, I'm starting to think that as well...
Elizabeth wrote: "I noticed that almost all of the books I have (physically have) from Persephone Books are in danger, which makes me assume that a lot of their catalog is at risk. Can I just provide you the link or do I really need to go through each individual book and type it all in? I don't exactly have the time to do all that for every small publisher I like.."I'm also a big Persephone fan. I've rescued a lot of them and will keep working on it if they are not coming on automatically. So don't worry about them :-)
Moloch wrote: "Frank wrote: "Actually, I'm not going to do it. Life's too short."To be honest, I'm starting to think that as well..."
Actually I'm kinda having fun with it :) If the functionality to see another user's books becomes available I might volunteer to help out :)
What's the policy on cover images obtained from amazon? I didn't see anything about this in the warning. Would it be acceptable to add an image from amazon, if the cover is exactly the same as one depicted on one of the acceptable source sites, the only difference being that the image from amazon is a larger, clearer scan?
Frank wrote: "Actually, I'm not going to do it. Life's too short."Actually, I won't neither! I just don't understand all this mess about rescuing a book as if it was the real book to be rescued and I just don't understand how amazon can claim this informtion is theirs!
Honestly, once the clean is done, I will try to upload my exported file and if it doesn't work I will then move to another website where it will!
Maria wrote: Actually I'm kinda having fun with it :) If the functionalit..."
Me too but then I am not trying to balance work and other committments. I've enjoyed tidying up the information/covers on a number of my books.
Question about ULRs.Sometimes I am finding that one source isn't necessarily giving me all the info I need. Publishers and authors sometimes give publication dates/page numbers & details of various editions and sometimes they don't, so I head off to World Cat.
My tendency is to put the best ULR (most info). Also if I get some info from them and some (page #s mainly) from my own copy to hand, ticking both boxes.
Is this messing up the system?
Aaron wrote: "What's the policy on cover images obtained from amazon? I didn't see anything about this in the warning. Would it be acceptable to add an image from amazon, if the cover is exactly the same as one ..."I would stay firmly away from anything related to Amazon including book covers.
Vivienne wrote: "Question about ULRs.Sometimes I am finding that one source isn't necessarily giving me all the info I need. Publishers and authors sometimes give publication dates/page numbers & details of vario..."
What I tend to do, is give the URL for the best website and rescue the book. I then if I have time edit the book again and add any other data I have as I would for any other "normal edit on a normal day".
You can also just leave the other fields until later once all the importing is done.
It may be that at a later date GR can modify the import routines to get additional data currently it is just updating things like title and author.
Nickname wrote: "I find this book in the rescue list http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
But it's not related with Amazon."
Did you rescue it as it is not showing as needing rescuing when I look at it.
It also does not show your name in the change log hence my question about rescuing it.
The language field has amazon.co.uk as the source
My list has gone down hugely but I'm a victim of my own making as I first put my books on with the right cover not ISBN so now I'm chaking them all!!! Quite like it. I have a couple that were safe but I noticed they had some wrong info, went to correct and noticed book description was cited as AMazon. Shouldn't that come up as'at risk'?
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