Adding Books

I think I must not be understanding some of the basic functionality of LibraryThing.
I spent quite of bit of time cleaning up the Luther's Works series.
https://www.librarything.com/series/Luther%27s+Works

Now I'd like to add the books from the series into my library.
I click on a book, then "Add to Your Books"

Instead of the book being added to my library I get a search screen.
So I search for the book and get varying results.

I choose one that looks the best and it is added to my library, however, it often has incomplete data: wrong author, not even part of the series, etc.. Often I end up having to combine this newly added book with the work that I started out trying to add from.

I just spend a whole evening getting all the volumes of Luther's Works properly combined - I don't want to add more editions and create more stuff that needs combined. All I want to do is add the edition I'm looking at to my library (ideally, using the Canon Title because I have painstakingly already set this information for each volume in the series.)

Please help me understand why this seems so much harder than it should. What part of the process am I not grasping?

Thank you,
Evan

>1 EvanScamman: You've now run into one of the most confusing things for new members, here on Library Thing. You would expect that the "Add Book" button would do just that; add the book you are looking at to your library. Nope. It's wicked to not rename it, or at least to put up some warning or other, but it does absolutely nothing other than to take you away from the very book you wanted to add.

One of the easiest things is to keep the tab open with the book details of the particular edition you wanted to add, and (using the "Add Books" link at the top of your browser) add the book manually. This will insure that your copy you add will be as close as possible to having the correct information in it. There's just no easy way to do it.

>1 EvanScamman: By the way, you're fairly new here, and I'm wondering why your library and account are so locked down. I'd have left my comment on your comments page, but you don't (currently, at least) have such a thing. Trust me, we're friendly folks. It'll be okay.

Hmmm. This is disappointing to hear. Wouldn't making books easy to add be important for LibraryThing?

Does this round-about way serve some sort of greater purpose? It seems to me that it just leads to the creation of tons of non-combined works and a very sloppy database.

>6 Collectorator: It does make sense why the Add Books page/button work as they do. If it simply added the book that you were seeing on your screen, yes, sometimes you would get a great record, but then sometimes you would get a half baked horrible record, and soon those records would take over the site because they're on the popular books and boom, suddenly the site is overrun with bad data. You may not like it, but it has been explained many times, and there are concrete and real reasons that it hasn't been changed and probably won't be.

First of all, >5 EvanScamman: Welcome.

Second of all, if you have the App, adding books is amazingly easy, you literally scan the UPC and it adds the book to your collections. So, what you actually seem to mean, is that adding a book that has your level of detail isn't easy. That's valid, but, it isn't true for everyone. Adding a book for me is amazingly easy, but, I don't care if every single one of my titles is perfect (I do clean up some of the Amazon junk sometimes if I have a second). As an FYI, we're all here on LT for different reasons. Mine is for what I've read, some are for their rare books, some are here for only the books they physically own, etc. etc.

I think I'm beginning to understand why this "easy add" feature is not available. But it certainly is confusing for new members.

>8 EvanScamman: Even though I do think that not being able to directly copy others records to make your own is a good policy, also definitely agree that the Add button that's not isn't straightforward for new members as it could be either. I'm glad that it did get sorted out for what you were working on as well.

Can someone please give me a clear instruction on how to add a book? I'm not trying to do anything fancy, just want the books to appear in the 'Your Books' section?...

Go to the Add Books page and enter something in the first box next to the Search button, an ISBN is best but a Title will do if it's unique enough, or follow it with a comma and the author to make it more unique. Select tags or collections if you want them, but if you do you need to do it before hitting the Search button.

Select a source: If it's not a super new book then Overcat is best since it's a compilation of previous library searches that worked. You can also choose Amazon (may be poor data quality) or any number of library sources.

Click the Search button. At this point one or more choices will appear in the right-hand column. Click on one of them to add it to Your Books.

Sorry if I am missing something, but what's the purpose of adding a book? Is it a book you have read or want to read?

>13 EmilieS:

Sorry if I am missing something, but what's the purpose of adding a book?

You are apparently missing the purpose of the site! This is a site for cataloguing books. The purpose of adding a book is to keep your catalogue current. Some people catalogue only those books they own, others include books they have read but do not own. It is also possible to have a "wish list".

What did you think the site was for?

Hi, rather than "start" a new topic, I figured since I had trouble adding a book today, to add it to this existing topic. I was scanning in books for the library and was unable to scan in the book, "A Valentie for Kayla" by Kimberly Rose Johnson. I tried scanning the barcodes, typing in the ISBN and then typing in the title and/or author. All to no avail. I took the offending book home and manually added it. Voila! It found all the associated information for the book. I scan using my iPhone app, and this is the first time I was unable to add a book with the app. Does anyone know why that was the case and why I had to manually add it at home from the browser? Curiosity is killing this cat....

Amazon.com finds it by ISBN. Whether or not you find it depends on whether or not the sources have it catalogued. Only two other people on LT have entered it, so perhaps it never became popular enough for libraries to buy it.

Our volunteer library has three books by this author, and all three do not look worn at all. Not being popular makes sense since it depends on someone to enter it into LT. We get all our books through donations from residents so it can be almost anything. Thanks for the explanation!

What's the best way to enter a book that has three separate works by different authors? I have this QPBC edition that has Brande's Becoming A Writer, Gardner's On Becoming A Novelist, and Welty's One Writer's Beginnings. As it has no ISBN, I can't see how others have handled such books. And what does one call such volumes?

The title should include all three titles. Work to work relationships should be set up on the main work page after checking that the work is not combined with one of the included titles.

One author should be in the author field, the others in the Other author field. After entering the Other authors should be confirmed on the main work page.

I would call it an anthology.

No ISBN does not prevent you from searching and finding a work. Becoming a writer The work page jobs have been done. You can see (on the editions page) that some people have separated the titles with ',' others with '/'.

>20 MarthaJeanne: What does "Work to work relationships should be set up on the main work page after checking that the work is no combined with one of the included titles" mean? I'm not much into the workings of LT beyond basic catalog.

Is there a maximum number of books one user can add?

>22 vickila49:

200, unless you have a lifetime account, in which case it’s unlimited.

>22 vickila49: Your profile says lifetime, so you're fine. As many as you want to enter.

Hi! I am trying to add a very old book to my catalog and it is not in the LT database. It's so old that it doesn't have an ISBN. Is there a way to manually add it to my library and thus enter it into the database?

>25 Rojasfam:

Yes. Scroll down to the bottom of the "Add Books" page, and you'll find that option.

However, you may have other library options. LT has nearly 5000 data sources that you can try. Have you tried Overcat? That's usually the first thing I go to. If the book was published in the U.S., the Library of Congress is good.

What book is it?

It's so old that it doesn't have an ISBN.

ISBNs aren't all that old.

>26 lilithcat: Thank you! I figured it out!
Yes! I did try every source. This was the first time I found a book not in the database. 😅
It was called In Christ by Andrew Murray
As for the ISBN, the version was so old that it had no identification other than title and publisher.

I am trying to find the option link to add a book the search for which comes up No Results. Also, can I share a link to my library?

If you look at the AddBooks screen, under the list of sources, there are a few links under Other options: Add manually | Import books

You can also always try additional sources - Overcat will find a lot of older books for example (it is a collection of all searches in all libraries performed by the users of LT). But you can also just add manually.

You can share the link to your library by just giving everyone the URL https://www.librarything.com/catalog/dkdug/yourlibrary (for your library) or to your profile: https://www.librarything.com/profile/dkdug

I have a barcode scanner on my phone called QR scanner. How do i scan a book and add to the library whose database/interphase is on my desktop?

>30 KalpaVriksha: You have to use LibraryThing app and it's 'add books' feature, which has it's own scanner

I have "Cognex Barcode Scanner" on my phone. I can scan a barcode and "copy to clipboard". I can then use the Chrome app on my phone to go to the librarything website and use the interface to "Add books" where I can copy the scanned isbn into the search field. A bit more cumbersome than what >31 SandraArdnas: suggests.

A QR code is not the same thing as a bar code

>3 Lyndatrue: This seems absolutely *insane* that I cannot add a book that has already been properly added to LT with good data and images by another LT user. Why on earth would I want to manually add something that is already in LT?! Most of my books that I want add do not have an ISBN, so the scanning app is of little use to me.

There really isn’t a way to do what the button actually says and “Add to Your Books” without manually searching and wasting minutes of time per book? This single issue will likely stop me from actually using (and adding to) LT.