Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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rescue a book without any info?
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message 1:
by
VBergen
(new)
Feb 01, 2012 05:07AM
Hello. I got an email to rescue some books, but how I can do that if it appears "Unknown Book..." and "Unknown Author..."? even if both messages have a number, how can I know what book it was? how to fix it if there is no isbn, author or title? I don't remember all my books :-s
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Did you write a review? Are there other editions on the right hand side of the page. Is the original title field still filled in.Can you post a link to the book
Nope, I did not write any review about them, just added as read and the stars. I tried to solve it by clicking the books listed in the e-mail I got, where it says "your books at risk" because there, they had the cover, author, title and all, and clicking there all disappeared and turned to "Unknown...", so I could changed them immediately. I guess it was right like this? My husband has the same problem but he did not get any email, so one of his books is still like "Unknown...".
Here the link:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
With a book like that, unless you can backwards engineer what it might have been by looking at the shelves it's on, there's not much hope.Goodreads has said before that they are continuing to do imports (especially of foreign language books) that would continue to salvage unknown books. So it's possible it will be automatically rescued at some point.
Hmm. Because the book and the author both have a number after them, is there any way Goodreads could figure out the identity of this book or either title or author?
I'm guessing the numbers refer back to the numbers in each user's records. If you click on Author 836, from the above link, you get about 100 hits, all different books.
Jeannette wrote: "I'm guessing the numbers refer back to the numbers in each user's records. If you click on Author 836, from the above link, you get about 100 hits, all different books."Thanks, Jeannette. Too bad.
Does it help to know that in June someone added V.Verdiani and Patrick Fischmann as additional authors?Just a clue from the change log.
Moloch wrote: "I guess this one is hopeless (for now) too?http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...
What can I do?"
Nothing much, unfortunately. As Vicky said, imports are still running and this book might get updated as part of that.
Cindy wrote: "Does it help to know that in June someone added V.Verdiani and Patrick Fischmann as additional authors?Just a clue from the change log."
It appears to be an Italian language book based on what's listed for Language.
It might help: In some cases it appears when you go to the author page, there are book titles for other works. Locating these other books might clarify the author. At such time, the person who has shelved the book might be able to recall the title.
Is there anyway we can trace what book it is by searching the ISBN number?
All the data recorded for this book is gone. No title, no author, no ISBN. These are slowly popping up, and I think the only way to recover them is from a user save, which not everyone has done.
Mod
The "unknown authors" do NOT each correspond to a single author.
I was able to find the details by clicking on the book link tab on the entry. I clicked on the amazon link and it took me to the book in Amazon. As we're not using their data I was then able to look elsewhere to find the details. At least it gave me a starting point. Hope that helps.
That trick only works if the edition has an isbn or asin leftover
rivka wrote: "The "unknown authors" do NOT each correspond to a single author.":-(
OK, I'll go back to my original publication date project.
Most of the books have ASIN numbers left. Can we trace them through ISBN and ASIN numbers?
Corey wrote: "Most of the books have ASIN numbers left. Can we trace them through ISBN and ASIN numbers?"If an edition still has an ASIN or ISBN number you can definitely use those to track them down. It's the editions that do not have ASIN or ISBN numbers any longer that need to detective work to figure out.
If you google Verdiani and Fischmann you find "Racconti dei saggi sciamani" (curiously, in Amazon is defined as "Perfect Paperback", something Moloch changed, at the same time she added the italian language), with Patrich Fischmann as coauthor and Vera Verdiani as translator. I don't know if this can be useful.
Vicky wrote: "Corey wrote: "Most of the books have ASIN numbers left. Can we trace them through ISBN and ASIN numbers?"If an edition still has an ASIN or ISBN number you can definitely use those to track them ..."
Yes but how can you verify ASIN book data given that we can't use Amazon as a source? It's one of those ridiculous situations where you have to have it in your hand to verify it.
David wrote: "I am pretty sure these three also preceded Amazon.com's existence and were never reprinted, and that I entered all their information myself. "Given that the three books have consecutive book numbers there is a good chance that they were added at the same time. So, if you think you might know which three books you added to Goodreads AND those same books are now missing from your shelves AND they haven't been re-added to Goodreads by anyone else then I would update those records and bring them back.
The records which got torpedoed by the Amazon clearout were all supposed to be books added directly from the Amazon database but who can tell.
Lobstergirl wrote: "Yes but how can you verify ASIN book data given that we can't use Amazon as a source? It's one of those ridiculous situations where you have to have it in your hand to verify it."I can't find the post right now, but it's been said before that a link from the author's site to Amazon with the ASIN in the link this constitutes information from the author and is acceptable confirmation.
Mod
Every now and then I find an originally published as title that can help track down at least the author name.
