original publish dates

[Michael]

So we've got 19555 books that the original publication year is greater than 2008

659 with a date > 2011


I'm pretty sure anything thats greater than 2011 has an error, so i'll probably clear all the values in that column that are 2012 or greater. But if the librarians agree, I might leave that alone or change my cut off date.


I'm going to add validations to the original published year validations to keep bad data out from now on, and also allow for negative years (B.C.) for the handful of books that existed over 2009 years ago.


Any questions, comments, thoughts?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Sounds great to me! Thanks!

[Cait]

Might some of them be non-Gregorian calendar years? I don't think it's a bad rule to specify Gregorian calendar on the years, but if that's what it is, maybe a note should be added somewhere....

[rivka, Former Moderator]

I think a note should be added somewhere. Plenty of the books entered by our Iranian members are using another calendar. Although that appears to result in the year being much too low, not too high.

[mlady_rebecca]

Sounds good. I don't imagine we have many valid books more than a year or two in advance of their release. 2012 seems like a generous margin.

[Michael]

I forgot that there are different calendars :(


Thai (BE) years are like 543 years forward. I have no idea how chinese dates work, but they're also different apparently.


I guess I'll have to figure all that out prior to reseting all these books.

I have a suspicion that there a problem with our amazon imported data, and if that 95% of the bad date, thats not a big deal, but i'd hate to undo someone's work to update a few hundred books to the wrong calendar system...

[Lobstergirl]

I suppose there's no way to enter a BC date?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

There is no current way to enter pre-0 dates. This has been discussed by GR staff, but since the number of affected items is very small, it's not a high priority.

[Michael]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2...

[Michael]

Eventually we'll add it. I'd like this feature also!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

heehee! Welcome back, Michael.

[Michael]

Thanks :D

[Sandra]

That was really lovely, MICHAEL. So sad to think he's gone. Thanks... hope you had a good time.

[MissJessie]

Truly lovely Michael. Glad you have returned.

[Lobstergirl]

I did actually see a negative date recently. Some book originally published in "-750".

[Deedee]

Hi - relatively new librarian here -

I have a physical copy of The Reader here in my hands. It lists the the original copyright date as "1995 by Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich"; however, Goodreads has the original copyright date as 1997. My instinct is to change the "original publication date" to 1995 and to leave the "published" date as 1997. Would that be correct?
Thanks!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Yes. (Looks like the English translation was first published 1997, but it was in German first, in 1995.)

[Deedee]

rivka wrote: "Yes. (Looks like the English translation was first published 1997, but it was in German first, in 1995.)"

Thanks for the quick reply -- I've gone ahead and made the change.