Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Archived
>
How do I help?
date
newest »
newest »
Jeannette, after I finish my project on my own shelves, I will be working on my friends shelves. I really don't know how others approach this, but I know that filling in missing original publication dates will take months. I note that your selves have 430 missing original publication dates.
How did you see that, just by opening each record? Can you tell me how to do that, and then I'll fix my own books, first? It fixes it for a lot of people that way.
I will be uploading scanned images this week, especially to replace the ones that got removed by accident. And, I've been randomly scanning through bookshelves and restoring some German books.
I will be uploading scanned images this week, especially to replace the ones that got removed by accident. And, I've been randomly scanning through bookshelves and restoring some German books.
If you're looking to add the "extra" info to your own books, one way to see which ones are missing information is to go into "My Books" and then, at the bottom, sort by the various options. I found my missing covers that way. You can also sort by, e.g., "date pub edition" and "Num pages" to add the publication dates and the number of pages.
Jeannette, on your shelf settings, you can select various information to show and then sort by that information. With 20 books showing per page, I found the page that started having data in the pub date field and multiplied. I didn't look at your covers, but you have missing ones, etc. There is so much work to do. I commented to my brother, who is also retired, that I've found a job.
I had to change the settings on my shelves, as I wasn't displaying all of that info. Now I know how to sort them, and to find out what's missing.
Thanks, Audrey, & Elizabeth!
Thanks, Audrey, & Elizabeth!
I'm trying to be systematic about this; otherwise, I feel like I'm chipping away at a boulder with a toothpick. Maybe it's my math background?
I didn't want to make this my new vocation, either, Elizabeth, but for now it is! :)
I didn't want to make this my new vocation, either, Elizabeth, but for now it is! :)
I don't know which piece of information is most important to you, but I would concentrate on that and let others worry about their own focus. When you have your own shelves looking like you want, you can choose a friend's shelves. After I finish the pub date on my shelves, I will begin to tackle the shelves of members in the group where I know that piece of information is important.
Sounds like a good plan. I think I'll start with book covers, and go from there. Just looking at my own shelves' missing data gives me plenty to do!
Is there a chance that publication dates will be imported by Ingram? Or will librarians have to re-add the dates by hand?
Laura, I know in one of these threads recently there was talk of doing an import of the dates. The consensus was that since the import was importing many of the wrong publication dates that people were going to do it by hand until a more reliable import could be constructed. So my main thing that I have been doing is adding original publication dates. That said, I noticed from the change log that you had added a lot of month/days to the original publication date. Did you have a source you were getting them from? I can find the year pretty easily but the month/day, no clue.
I was going based off the earliest hardcover/paperback publication date listed on Goodreads. Someone has been setting them to January 1st and I've been trying to correct those. For the ones where there's no publication date listed or the earliest edition doesn't have a date, I've just left it blank and moved on to another book. Is there a better way to do it? If most publishing sites don't list them and we can't use blogs anymore, how are we supposed to find out?
Goodreads itself sets the month/day to January 1, when no month/day is entered.
Really, because if I can't find a solid month/day, I've just been entering the year. Is that just for imports? Looking at my shelves I see a ton with just a year. I've been using worldcat to look at the publication dates on all editions and finding the year or full date if its in the notes. Then I look in the logs to see if anyone entered a month date previously.
One book takes a while...
Maybe I'm thinking about date read and date purchased. I'm sure GR inserts month/day in those when they're blank. Might be mistaken about pub date. Sorry.
I'll stick to worldcat from now on then. What should we do about the editions that have full dates then? Assume that they're from Amazon and delete them, keep them and use them for original dates, or just leave them?I'm just trying to clean up my shelves, I used to keep them so up-to-date and now everything's been reverted back to blanks. Sorry if I caused an inconvenience!
I've been finding some full dates from author or publisher websites. So please don't assume they are from Amazon!
What a mess. I show over 600 of my books with no pub date, including recent Rick Riordan, and several with garbage dates like 1100.
Mod
Not for pub dates, at least not usually.
To me it looks that if you enter a new date with only a year, it is set to January 1, but if you remove that it sticks to only the year.
Cindy wrote: "I've been finding some full dates from author or publisher websites. So please don't assume they are from Amazon!"Yeah, I agree. I've been getting dates from publishers sites as well.
I'll have to check publishers websites again then. I started that way but it wasn't working out well. Laura, I think your process was okay. The dates for the specific editions I've found on the few I've looked seemed okay if they were there.
rivka wrote: "Betsy wrote: "Goodreads itself sets the month/day to January 1, when no month/day is entered."Not for pub dates, at least not usually."
I've noticed that occasionally when I've combined editions, the original publication date has been overwritten with 1 January of the year of the latest edition added. I don't know if that was to do with the order I was selecting the items (I've subsequently been careful to always select the main item with the correct publication date first), or if it was a random glitch. I've also come across a couple of records where it says I had set the original publication date to something completely random when I hadn't deliberately changed it at all, but had changed another piece of information.
Mod
rivka wrote: "The original publication date will automatically set itself to the date of the earliest edition of the work when no other date has been set."How are there so many blanks then? If it automatically sets to the earliest date listed, shouldn't every book have an original publication date then, instead of a blank?
I think it's erroneous to assume full dates are from Amazon. From my understanding, all information sourced from Amazon was wiped. Therefore, any full dates that remain were not sourced from Amazon. Maybe rivka can clarify? Thanks!
Mod
It only does this when an edition of the work is edited, not if it's just sitting there minding its business. ;)
Mod
If it was imported from Amazon, yes. If a user now goes in and edits the info, it would be identified as from the user. But if their source were Amazon, that is a potential problem.
In any case, publishers often have complete publication dates, and so do some of our import sources. So I certainly wouldn't assume a complete publication date came from Amazon. Just that it did not come from WorldCat.
rivka wrote: "Laura wrote: "How are there so many blanks then? If it automatically sets to the earliest date listed, shouldn't every book have an original publication date then, instead of a blank?"It only does this when an edition of the work is edited, not if it's just sitting there minding its business. ;) "
Just to clarify for my still waking brain, if we edit something else about an edition, say a page number update, after we are done the system should respond by surveying all editions and coming up with an original publication date?
Mod
How would you know whether a users source was Amazon? I'm not using them (shudder), but I make manual entries for pub date, as I assume other users would as well. And, no, please don't erase what others have entered!
Cindy wrote: "I've been finding some full dates from author or publisher websites. So please don't assume they are from Amazon!"Yes, I have found the same, Cindy. I visit the publisher's websites directly, as a first-line and then add the URL from them - if the URL is blank for a given book and is, of course, appropriate to the specific ISBN.
I hope people aren't assuming info comes from Amazon and then deleting.
What's the plan going forward?