Amazon is going away as a data source Showing 1,501-1,550 of 1,599

[Maria]

Does anybody know what the new required field "Change comment" on the book edit field is all about?

[Vivienne]

Maria wrote: "Does anybody know what the new required field "Change comment" on the book edit field is all about?"

Basically you make a brief note of the changes you've made to the record for the change log.

[Sally]

Thanks so much, Sara ♥! I had no idea you could sort by covers until five seconds ago! Just found tomorrow morning's project, it seems ;) 135 or so coverless books... sigh! At least it could have been worse!

[Tiffany]

Maria wrote: "Does anybody know what the new required field "Change comment" on the book edit field is all about?"

Hasn't that been there for a long time? "Required", but it actually never forces/d you to put anything?

[Sandra]

At least since 2009 when I joined GR.

[Maria]

Gotcha - somehow I've just never noticed it before :-/ With all these other changes I was suddenly über conscious of things I couldn't remember seeing before ;)

[Sandra]

Maria wrote: "Gotcha - somehow I've just never noticed it before :-/ With all these other changes I was suddenly über conscious of things I couldn't remember seeing before ;)"

I've never used it either :)

[Paul]

Now that Amazon sourced covers are no longer showing I have noticed something worrying. When rescuing books I tried very hard to source cover images. However now I'm finding that some books which I saved for which I am certain I added an image are not showing them. For example http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12.... I really do not want to have to go through a long list of books a second time doing a job I've already done.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

The logs shows edits that correspond to a rescue, but has no record of an image upload.

[Moira]

I didn't see an answer to this, and I can't read through 31 pages of comments right now.

How exactly are you going to keep Kindle data without using Amazon?

What about Audible audiobooks, since that's now also a part of Amazon?

[Paul]

Paul wrote: "Now that Amazon sourced covers are no longer showing I have noticed something worrying. When rescuing books I tried very hard to source cover images. However now I'm finding that some books which I..."
rivka wrote: "The logs shows edits that correspond to a rescue, but has no record of an image upload."

Sadly it is not an isolated incident. Another example is http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85.... This is incredibly frustrating having made an effort. I just hope I've been randomly unlucky somehow because the idea that it has happened more widely to other users is not a pleasant one.

I guess I have a load more work to (re)do :(

[Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large)]

Becky, Lobstergirl, Alessandra, Cheryl and everybody else who helped in response to my above plea, thank you so much! A bunch of those rescue lists are really down now, and the remaining task doesn't look nearly as daunting any longer as it did before!

And Alessandra and Stacey, Lisa is absolutely right -- a librarian's job usually is great fun, and you ever only work as hard as you want. This is an emergency ... it's probably the worst introduction to life as a GR librarian you could possibly have gotten! Kudos to you and everyone else willing to expose themselves to this sort of trial by fire ...

[Paula]

Moira wrote: "I didn't see an answer to this, and I can't read through 31 pages of comments right now.

How exactly are you going to keep Kindle data without using Amazon?

What about Audible audiobooks, since t..."

These can be manually loaded when users own the edition or if authors post details on their websites they can be added from there manually.

[Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large)]

Also, if there's another edition of the same book (e.g. hardcover or paperback), as a stop gap measure some of us have been combining the kindles to those. It still means the kindle edition is going to be deleted, but at least your reviews, ratings etc. are going to be linked to something specific (and not a "blank" spaceholder not even showing author name and book title), so at least you don't have to re-enter the kindle data manually by end of business today but can come back later and do it at your own pace ...

[Sandra]

Well, they should of been combined already, but I noticed yesterday that quite a few had mysteriously become lonely.

[Angela]

Ugh, this auto-importing data has made such a mess of books where an ISBN relates to more than one book. Crying a little..

On the plus side, my rescue list dropped from nearly 4000 down to 150. :D

[Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large)]

4000 books to rescue to begin with?! Oh man ... poor you! :((( 150 sounds downright manageable compared to that ...

[D.J]

Can someone clarify something for me please, if I save a book image on my hard drive then import it into Goodreads as the cover image does it matter where I source the cover from? Would it show up as being downloaded from my computer or as coming from the original source (for example Amazon or ebay?)

[Sandra]

You are not allowed to download covers from Amazon, for LEGAL REASONS. Please don't do it, you could be putting GR in a legal minefield.

[D.J]

That's why I asked the question

[Sandra]

Good enough :)

[Patrick]

I'm sure my personal ratings of books didn't come from Amazon, so why have some of them disappeared?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

No ratings should have disappeared. Please link to an example of a book where your rating has disappeared?

[[deleted user]]

I think I may have lost a couple of ratings, too. I don't remember writing a review without also adding a rating. Here's an example:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68...

Is there a way to look in the data I backed up last week to see if the rating really did disappear?

Well, never mind. I looked in my backup, and it shows 0 in the rating field.

[Jan]

I seem to recall PAtrick saying somewhere that there could be some issues with displaying the ratings and averages and thinks like that, but that the data would still be there, just not showing correctly.

[Maria]

Jeannette, look for the book in your backup file. There should be a column with "My rating". It'll be 0 if unrated and otherwise a number between 1-5.

[[deleted user]]

I found it, Maria, with 0 stars. It's good to know that all of this is actually in the backup file. Sloppy reviewing on my part!

[[deleted user]]

It is supposed to be some time today.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...

There is a FAQ, but I haven't seen anything definite, yet.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/7...

[Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large)]

Today is the last day to get this done, alas.

[Terri]

Otis wrote: "Some updates:

We are down to 1% of works left to rescue! And of those remaining, 70% have only been shelved once, and 96% have been shelved less than 5 times - so we are really getting down to th..."

Thanks Otis, Just what I like to hear it. I wake up, saw my books that no images in it. I hates to do this again since I rescue those books couple days. Sadly Amazon will have learned the lesson that all customers is very disapponted with it.

[[deleted user]]

Other people are still working, Audra, so you're not as alone as it feels! I rescued some books this morning.

[Themis-Athena (Lioness at Large)]

Jeannette wrote: "Other people are still working, Audra, so you're not as alone as it feels!"

Indeed ... :(

[Cait]

A question about books which have been blanked out/deleted:

I looked at this series listing, for example, and I saw that it said "14 primary works" but only only 10 primary works were showing -- books 2, 5, 7, and 9 were missing from the listing. Searching for book 2 by ISBN didn't work, so I recreated it from the publisher's webpage. I didn't have any "ISBN in use" error message creating the book manually, and when it was created it wasn't part of the series. After I added it to the series, the series began to say "11 primary works" (because books 5, 7, and 9 are still missing).

Was this because no one had shelved book 2? Are the series numbers just cached? Other books in this series are still up for rescue (I'm working on them now) but all of the remaining ones have been shelved. (I don't know for sure if the missing ones were shelved or not -- I read this series in different volume splits and just like to librarian-sit the whole set.)

[Sandra]

Interesting, I came across a series that was showing only 3 of the 4 books, cause the default cover was deleted. The #3 book was still there when you went into the series, just couldn't see it on the author page, sadly I couldn't find an image for it. Will hope for the imports.

[Lee (of Shalott)]

Lisa wrote: "I really hope that everyone will stop purchasing from Amazon and will write and tell them why. I did."

I'm with you; my feelings for Amazon are irrevocably altered as well. It *kills* me to think of all the covers I've uploaded to Amazon & all the corrections I've sent in to help them improve their database over the years.... I can only wonder if this has something to do with their Shelfari or some such & is purely about competition. Hmpf.

[Manybooks]

Lee wrote: "Lisa wrote: "I really hope that everyone will stop purchasing from Amazon and will write and tell them why. I did."

I'm with you; my feelings for Amazon are irrevocably altered as well. It *kill..."

Probably, if they own Shelfari.

[Terri]

Gundula wrote: "Lee wrote: "Lisa wrote: "I really hope that everyone will stop purchasing from Amazon and will write and tell them why. I did."

I'm with you; my feelings for Amazon are irrevocably altered as well..."

Shelfari is own amazon as well. Sadly. Amazon would have take complaints from customers

[Brixton]

I see covers are starting to come in from ingram. Not always current or correct, but it's something.

[Manybooks]

Brixton wrote: "I see covers are starting to come in from ingram. Not always current or correct, but it's something."

I just hope that they also import covers from German, French etc. sources.

[Terri]

Brixton wrote: "I see covers are starting to come in from ingram. Not always current or correct, but it's something."

I am glad to see it.

[Kouk]

I clicked on the ''rescue'' link and no books were listed. (it said ''Great news, all of your books have been rescued'')

But when i click on ''all'' in bookshelves there are books with no cover.

Does that mean that my books are still in danger to dissapear?

[Audrey]

Kouk wrote: "I clicked on the ''rescue'' link and no books were listed. (it said ''Great news, all of your books have been rescued'')

But when i click on ''all'' in bookshelves there are books with no cover...."

Kouk, they are no longer considered "at risk" because the title and author (the only two fields that were deemed "critical" in this operation) were rescued already. If there was other information that was sourced from Amazon (e.g., cover art, publisher information, page count, etc.), then that information will still disappear at the end of the day if nobody has replaced those fields yet with Librarian- or import-sourced information.

[Julie]

Lack of a cover image has nothing to do with the book being in danger. If the rescue link says you are ok, you should be ok. Cover images are being added back both by imports and by librarians.

[Kouk]

Julie wrote: "Lack of a cover image has nothing to do with the book being in danger. If the rescue link says you are ok, you should be ok. Cover images are being added back both by imports and by librarians."

Thanks Audrey & Julie,

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Cait & Sandra, Michael mentioned that there are likely to be some data hiccups as we run the various scripts over the next few days. I suspect this is one such hiccup. (But I'll make a ticket, just in case.)

[Alessandra]

Lee wrote: "Lisa wrote: "I really hope that everyone will stop purchasing from Amazon and will write and tell them why. I did."

I'm with you; my feelings for Amazon are irrevocably altered as well. It *kill..."

Amazon has been awfully bullying about owning what is essentially an immense volunteer effort. I had only added some data and reviews there. Most of what I've added is here at GR (a lot of it thanks to the last couple of weeks -- yeesh!). Now I'm a lot less interested in helping Amazon, either by improving its data or by spending my dollars there.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Cait wrote: "Was this because no one had shelved book 2?"

Looks like the answer to this is yes. After the Amazon data is all gone (tomorrow) is probably the best time for librarians to fix these, as Amazon data will be gradually disappearing all day today (starting with books unshelved by any user, already in process).

[Ellie]

Do we know when the big import is due to finish? I don't want to start adding cover images if they are going to appear by themselves but I also don't like so many with blank covers (also messes with widgets elsewhere).

[scherzo♫]

Tiffany wrote: "Can't find this discussed anywhere, so apologies if it's already been answered --

Is openisbn.com an acceptable source? I can't find anything on their site that says they get their data from Amazo..."

Was this question @1464 answered?

About:

"OPENISBN is a personal project dedicated to provide its users ISBN search services and ISBN data, introduction, book reviews, book preview, free ebooks and book price comparison for your specific book."

But there's a Buy Books tab.

[James]

Felt good to scan and upload the cover image from my copy of: The Tough Guide To Fantasyland

I had purchased that one from Amazon back in September...

So, a measure of poetic justice if nothing else.