Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Archived
>
Working on unknown books/unknown authors
date
newest »
newest »
Yes. But the book id in your export is unique to your shelves. Author 39 has 183 works associated with it, but they aren't all by the same author:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
So, you can only determine the title of a book based on the id number if it's on your own shelf, from the data in your backup. No one else's books can be rescued from your data, unfortunately. The id numbers are only unique within your data, and point to a different book in somebody else's data. (I'm guessing that's what I didn't make clear.)
*My information about book ids is incorrect. It is explained correctly in posts 54 & 55*
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...
So, you can only determine the title of a book based on the id number if it's on your own shelf, from the data in your backup. No one else's books can be rescued from your data, unfortunately. The id numbers are only unique within your data, and point to a different book in somebody else's data. (I'm guessing that's what I didn't make clear.)
*My information about book ids is incorrect. It is explained correctly in posts 54 & 55*
most of the books seem to be childrens books, and rather old, but definitely no isbn in the data that goodreads still shows.
Jeannette wrote: "Yes. But the book id in your export is unique to your shelves.That is not my understanding but.....happy to be proved wrong, the book id is unique to an edition of a book, it has nothing to do with your shelves.
So by changing the number in the URL you can match your CSV file book id with the book edition on GR.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...
THe wording after the number is irrelevant
Mod
Correct. This has nothing to do with the number assigned the author or title.
I'm happy to be proven wrong. But what happens if you do not have a save file to reference?
Then more detective work is required where no info is known. I would think that it may be some are never rescued if the people who have shelved them cannot rescue them and no other information is found.
I am glad that you explained the way that the book id works, because I haven't understood it these past weeks, and I do not like to pass along incorrect information.
I typed 'yucky monster' into the search window. I got a book I was able to fix, and I got an 'unknown' w/no information. Is it possible that the unknown is in fact another edition (or listing) of the real book?I suspect it is, because yesterday I typed something (forget what) into search, and in addition the book I expected I got an 'unknown' with an ASIN, and the ASIN led me to another edition of the named book. (So I put in the basic data to the unknown book and combined them.)
It'd be great if we could just rescue the 'unkown' result for "yucky monster" with The Yucky Monster but I don't know if that's right - ?
Mod
Jeannette wrote: I looked at Community Reviews for this book. One of your friends (another Alexander) just read it in January 2012, and gave it 4 stars. And, he doesn't have many books shelved, so maybe he can remember which book this is. I know, he just copied some of my books which he also had when he was doing initial setup of his account. Now he has no idea what that particular book was :)
As an IT professional with 15+ year experience I find it strange and disturbing that there is no any kind of backup database that would hold a copy of GoodReads books prior to the Amazon's decision to cease its support for the data. Even if the data had been requested from Amazon on the fly every time a particular book's page was displayed (which I find doubtful), some cache of the information could still have been created and stored.
Mod
How do i get this book added?"The Phoenix Couple: MAY DAY" by Smith E. Wood
isbn:978-1-4349-1131-5
#63 - Done. Would you double check it and make sure it looks ok? Thanks!http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...
Came across this Unknown Author book entry today http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13... . Was able to find a similar title (different ISBN) at the publisher's website http://www.pimsleur.com/Learn-Farsi-P... . What do we put as the author for this entry?
okyrhoe wrote: "Came across this Unknown Author book entry today http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13... . Was able to find a similar title (different ISBN) at the publisher's web..."
Ehhh.... I would put the author as "Pimsleur". I can't really find any other direct author data, so at this point the imprint will have to do.
ETA: Looks like all the books included in that program are listed here under either "Pimsleur" or "Pimsleur Language Programs".
Most of the series tend to have "Pimsleur" or "Pimsleur Language Programs" as the author. Personally I would go with "Pimsleur" as that is the one on the front of nearly everything they do.
I was gone when all of this went down, so forgive me if this has already been answered, but there are a ton of unknown books with no data at all (no ISBN, nada). Is it possible that during the transition that user added editions got the unknown label if there was no ISBN?
Jessica wrote: "I was gone when all of this went down, so forgive me if this has already been answered, but there are a ton of unknown books with no data at all (no ISBN, nada). Is it possible that during the tran..."So far we are leaving even the empty unknown books. According to what I last heard, TPTB have stated that the imports may be able to rescue even those empty books.
lafon حمزة wrote: "Jessica wrote: "I was gone when all of this went down, so forgive me if this has already been answered, but there are a ton of unknown books with no data at all (no ISBN, nada). Is it possible that..."That's good to know!
Jessica wrote: "Is it possible that during the transition that user added editions got the unknown label if there was no ISBN? "User-added editions and details should not have been touched by the process of stripping away Amazon data, no. (On the other hand, ISBN-less user-added works tend to be duplicate editions, which could quite possibly have been merged with Amazon-added counterparts before the Amazon data purge.)
With book ID I meant the number that is specific for each edition, and you can always find in the link. It seems that the Unknown Number titling is based on this ID stuff. So if you've made an export of your books, you should be able to link these id numbers.
I had rescued everything, so I wasn't able to confirm this, but it's how I'd assume it would work.