Hints for cleaning up book records

[Alessandra]

Through not too complicated circumstances I've drifted into fixing up the GoodReads pages of Mad Magazine mass market paperbacks (I had a handful, noted that none of them on the database had covers, scanned and uploaded my own, then realized that almost none of the ones on GR had covers and there were lots of editions that needed combining, etc. etc.).

During this, I've read the Librarians Manual a few times, but also found some things which weren't obvious (to me, at least, but then I can be slow).

So I'd like to give some hints as to what to do when Librarians are faced with shambolic collections of books. Some of these are probably pretty obvious, and I can only say that they tripped me up for a while before the light bulb moment. Some of them were frustrating.

Dealing with them helps the database, so can I ask that others add their helpful hints, too?

Hints

*Do a search with the author's name
--I thought I had cleaned up all of Dave Berg's books because I had gone to his author's page and gone through them all. Naive, yes? But when I did a search using his name, I found an entirely new author listing of his books, none of which had covers.

--How did that happen? The new listing had his name with two spaces instead of one between his first and last name. That, the Librarians Manual tells us, makes an entirely different author record.

--Since searches simply look for each word listed, they can find inobvious variations of the author or book title. Lesson: don't just rely on author pages (whoops).

*Gibberish proliferates
--A number of books had gibberish titles. Some of them were obvious to fix ("Mad's Look At Living By Dave Berg By Dave Berg By Dave Berg"), others less so ("Berg Look Peo: Making O", which I haven't fixed yet).

--When I checked ISBNs on Google, I invariably got the same gibberish title on site after site across the net. Clearly, each gibberish title started somewhere and site after site mindlessly (electronically, anyway), copied it. Well, it falls on us humans to try and correct the error. This is where all those collected Librarian resources are sheer gold, thank you all who have accumulated them.

*Do a search with the title
--Because sometimes the entirely wrong author name gets associated with a book.

*Covers are your friend
--Yes, they're optional, but the human mind recognizes images so fast and so deeply, they are a tremendous resource in the organizing of books. Find a cover if at all possible, just not from Amazon or any of its affiliates or a sales site. I was lucky enough to find several incredibly good noncommercial collectors' sites, and there are also libraries, etc., many of which are listed as resources elsewhere on this site.

[Cheryl]

Thanks for this. And if someone wants to list a bunch of big valid sources for covers, please do so. I've seen mentions elsewhere, but nothing really good collated.

[Jim]

here's one that needs cleaning up. The Sentry. by Paul Jenkins. the description that comes up is of a b/w spider-man volume. the book is actually fully color w/x-me, hulk, spider-man etc comic reprints

[Cheryl]

Jim, you'll get more attention if you start a new thread for that book. Also, if you can direct us to a more complete source of information that would help. We're just volunteers, doing the best we can for many many book records ... and that's why this thread is focused on hints to help us, not on specific assignments.

[Barbara]

I added a new book title with the right ISBN but made a mistake with the last word in the title. It's Write On, Mercy! The Secret Life of Mercy Otis Warren--and I used a different last name instead of Warren. Could you explain how to change the title? Thanks so much!

[Vicky]

Barbara wrote: "I added a new book title with the right ISBN but made a mistake with the last word in the title. It's Write On, Mercy! The Secret Life of Mercy Otis Warren--and I used a different last name instead..."

Only librarians are able to make changes once books are created. You can read about librarians and apply here if you want to become a librarian for the future. In the mean time though, I've updated the book for you. :)

[Violetta]

Alessandra wrote: "*Do a search with the author's name..."

Yes, I have often found that with some authors, the last and first names get switched (thereby creating additional author identities). I also have started to rely on the "similar names" feature in the author edit pages. That way, if I need to disambiguate, I can get an idea of how many other authors may be out there with the same name :)