1ArlieS
Works https://www.librarything.com/work/858670 and https://www.librarything.com/work/30472141 need to be combined such that the title and other attributes of 858670 are retained. The combining UI is listing 30472141 first, which I believe means that the wrong thing will be done.
Is there any UI to control this, or must one save and copy everything manually?
Is anyone competent enough and public spirited enough to do this for me, since I just can't reliably handle the complexity, along with a browser that's unpredictable about where it puts new tabs, and a copy-and-paste UI that copies the wrong thing kind of randomly. (Yes, I love modern digital technology (NOT!). Nothing is really reliable, and no one under a certain age sees that as even being regrettable.)
Is there any UI to control this, or must one save and copy everything manually?
Is anyone competent enough and public spirited enough to do this for me, since I just can't reliably handle the complexity, along with a browser that's unpredictable about where it puts new tabs, and a copy-and-paste UI that copies the wrong thing kind of randomly. (Yes, I love modern digital technology (NOT!). Nothing is really reliable, and no one under a certain age sees that as even being regrettable.)
2lilithcat
I wouldn't combine them. The first is just Vol. 2, the second doesn't specify, so it might be Vol.1 or a 2-volume set.
3ArlieS
IIRC, they all have the same ISBN. I have the book, which is a single volume. I also have the second volume, which has a different ISBN.
For reasons not plain to me, the title you get when you add either book by ISBN doesn't include any indicator of which volume. I finally resorted to "add manually".
Note: unfortunately, there's a single library of congress number for the whole set, which muddies the waters a bit. Who knows what the users used when adding their books...
For reasons not plain to me, the title you get when you add either book by ISBN doesn't include any indicator of which volume. I finally resorted to "add manually".
Note: unfortunately, there's a single library of congress number for the whole set, which muddies the waters a bit. Who knows what the users used when adding their books...
4AnnieMod
>3 ArlieS: People will often add the wrong book and then edit the title but leave the isbn to point to the original book they added - titles are visible, ISBNs not as much and a lot of people do not care about them. Which is why we tend to use the titles when combining and not ISBNs. I would not combine based on isbn only, especially when the title allows for it to be another book.
5ArlieS
Oh dear. It seems as if there's no right way to do anything. Sadly, one of those is on my bookshelf. I want my book to be correct, but the automatic system decided "same ISBN", perhaps instead of "same title". (More likely, the Overcat record for the ISBN neglected to mention the volume number.)
See https://www.librarything.com/topic/351750 for more of this story.
I may have to delete my book and re-add using manual entry, so as to get the title correct, and, hopefully, my book associated with the correct work.
I wish there was a better way, but it's way too easy for people adding books to create unfixable situations. (I've done it myself - for at least my first year or two on LibraryThing, I wasn't aware of "add manually", or even that I could add by library of congress number, and when adding books without ISBNs, I would search by author and title, select whichever book from Overcat was the least bad match, then edit it.)
See https://www.librarything.com/topic/351750 for more of this story.
I may have to delete my book and re-add using manual entry, so as to get the title correct, and, hopefully, my book associated with the correct work.
I wish there was a better way, but it's way too easy for people adding books to create unfixable situations. (I've done it myself - for at least my first year or two on LibraryThing, I wasn't aware of "add manually", or even that I could add by library of congress number, and when adding books without ISBNs, I would search by author and title, select whichever book from Overcat was the least bad match, then edit it.)
6gilroy
>5 ArlieS: Instead of delete and readd, just edit your existing record. Then you can find and remove your book from the incorrect work and combine it with the proper one.
7ArlieS
>6 gilroy: In one of these cases, I couldn't find my particular work. I first detached everything that included the "volume 1" I'd added to the title. When that didn't get my book detached, I started detaching everything with the same ISBN as my book. That didn't work either. Very frustrating, and left quite a mess behind me. Worse, it may well have messed up other people's catalogs.
8Felagund
>7 ArlieS:
You can't really mess up other people's catalogs, their own data remains totally untouched.
What could be messed up to some extent is Common Knowledge, which is attached to the work level instead of the book level - but it can very often be fixed by re-combining the books properly. Sometimes it can be a bit time-consuming, but it is very rarely unfixable.
You can't really mess up other people's catalogs, their own data remains totally untouched.
What could be messed up to some extent is Common Knowledge, which is attached to the work level instead of the book level - but it can very often be fixed by re-combining the books properly. Sometimes it can be a bit time-consuming, but it is very rarely unfixable.
9waltzmn
>8 Felagund: What could be messed up to some extent is Common Knowledge
Also covers, I believe. I just dealt with one of those where two different books were combined: The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Hebrew Old Testament... and Interlinear Greek-English New Testament : With Greek-English Lexicon. When I added the former to my library, I uploaded a custom cover. Then it appears someone combined the two, and the covers transferred to the latter. Yesterday I saw what appeared to be a wrong cover for the former, flagged it, discovered that there were dozens more, realized it was a false combination, split the book, recombined it with two other editions -- and, of course, found that my custom cover was still attached to the wrong book. So the New Testament one has a wrong cover and a right cover that I wrongly flagged. :-)
Also covers, I believe. I just dealt with one of those where two different books were combined: The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Hebrew Old Testament... and Interlinear Greek-English New Testament : With Greek-English Lexicon. When I added the former to my library, I uploaded a custom cover. Then it appears someone combined the two, and the covers transferred to the latter. Yesterday I saw what appeared to be a wrong cover for the former, flagged it, discovered that there were dozens more, realized it was a false combination, split the book, recombined it with two other editions -- and, of course, found that my custom cover was still attached to the wrong book. So the New Testament one has a wrong cover and a right cover that I wrongly flagged. :-)
10ArlieS
I'd really love to see a data model for all the relationships between records and fields in the library thing database, and the relationship between database fields and information displayed on the various web pages.
I'm gradually building somewhat of a tentative model in my head, because that's who this retired software engineer still thinks, but having the model documented by the developers would make it a lot less tentative. Not that I expect them to do this - doubtless very few of their users would regard it as anything but techie gobbletygook ;)
I'm gradually building somewhat of a tentative model in my head, because that's who this retired software engineer still thinks, but having the model documented by the developers would make it a lot less tentative. Not that I expect them to do this - doubtless very few of their users would regard it as anything but techie gobbletygook ;)
11Stevil2001
>9 waltzmn: If no one is using the cover left on a work after you do some separating, clicking Recalculate cover will make the unused covers go away.
12Nevov
>9 waltzmn: >11 Stevil2001: Covers are tied to books/editions so follow the editions around wherever they're separated and combined to; though hitting Recalculate Cover is often needed to see it immediately after a change has happened. On the one >9 waltzmn: quoted I found 10 or so OT editions on the NT work, so I've done a bit of fix there, if that has made any improvement with the covers. Unfortunately sometimes covers do just get on the wrong edition in the first place.
>8 Felagund:
>You can't really mess up other people's catalogs, their own data remains totally untouched.
My latest fun is finding someone has catalogued many works with the author name in the title. Eg. they might have title: Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace, author field: blank. Or a quite distinctive title so it's clear what work they mean, but no author name. Presumably an import from a datafile that had them like that. I understand why of course we can't touch other people's book data... but ones like that... vexing!
(Edited for slight clarify of 2nd part)
>8 Felagund:
>You can't really mess up other people's catalogs, their own data remains totally untouched.
My latest fun is finding someone has catalogued many works with the author name in the title. Eg. they might have title: Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace, author field: blank. Or a quite distinctive title so it's clear what work they mean, but no author name. Presumably an import from a datafile that had them like that. I understand why of course we can't touch other people's book data... but ones like that... vexing!
(Edited for slight clarify of 2nd part)
13waltzmn
>12 Nevov: My latest fun is finding someone has catalogued many works with the author name in the title. Eg. they might have title: Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace, author field: blank. Or a quite distinctive title so it's clear what work they mean, but no author name. Presumably an import from a datafile that had them like that. I understand why of course we can't touch other people's book data... but ones like that... vexing!
The ones that show up in my library are usually shown as "from old catalogue" or something similar. I'd love to get those right. Of course, I'm often the only one with the book, so it hardly matters in practice. But maybe we should request a feature to let people be notified when a messed-up title is fixed? They wouldn't have to change, but they would be aware of the possibility.
The ones that show up in my library are usually shown as "from old catalogue" or something similar. I'd love to get those right. Of course, I'm often the only one with the book, so it hardly matters in practice. But maybe we should request a feature to let people be notified when a messed-up title is fixed? They wouldn't have to change, but they would be aware of the possibility.
