Hello! Just joined last night

Hi All,
I'm a refugee from the Booxter app which is no longer working with my upgrade to Sonoma on my MacBook Pro. I think the developer either stopped offering tech assistance or he has died as he hasn't responded to anyone's issues in a long while. One of the things I loved about the app was that it kept a cumulative total of how much money I've spent on books. I don't see any place to enter in price. Am I missing something?

Also for some reason, I can't figure out how to add OCLC subject headings. In my younger years I was a professional librarian and spent part of my time as a cataloger. LibraryThing seems to have most everything a cataloger needs but I'm stymied by not being able to enter subject headings for some of the books I've listed. Typing in the ISBN does immediately include subject headings but not always. Manually adding them doesn't seem to work. Any help would be much appreciated.

I look forward to getting to know LibraryThing well and participating in some of the other groups as well. Thanks in advance!

Hi there!

While there is a price field for each of your records, there are two issues with it. One is that you first have to make it visible (go to https://www.librarything.com/settings/styles and look under "miscellaneous" on the right hand side, then drag the price field onto a style). The second issue is that it lists a price sourced from Bowker and cannot be changed to reflect the price you paid for your book. Such a field has been requested multiple times (e.g. in the discussions in this thread, or several threads here), but The Powers That Be have decided, for now, not to include one. (Problems with such a field include coverage for multiple currencies, coverage for defunct currencies, up-to-date conversion rates and the concomitant server load, confusion between "price paid" and "value of the book").

So, put briefly, LT has no way of displaying a "price purchased" value, let alone a cumulative total. The usual workaround is to note price in the private comments field, so that the info is at least there. If you export your LT data, you can then sum the values in that column in a spreadsheet app.

As for OCLC subject headings, I may be wrong, but I think that those are only pulled in if your source on the "Add Books" page happens to include them -- so several libraries will (especially the Library of Congress), but the Amazons will not. They're not guaranteed to be correct, though, and may even be missing for most items -- something to do with OCLC numbers being proprietary, which is also why that field is not editable. At least, that's my impression. More knowledgeable members may correct me here.

A workaround here would be to use the "other call number" field on the "edit book page." But that would unfortunately be a manual process.

Thanks so much, Petroglyph. I will make do. I'm noticing that LOC does add subj. heads on many books but not all. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my manually added subj. heads to stick. Perhaps it is my computer. Fortunately, most of the books that I've gotten from LOC do have headings.

Subject headings have to come from a source. If someone else has imported them you will still see them.

Using Amazon as a source for older books is not a good idea. That tends to be data from their 'partners' and of very poor quality. Overcat is an easy way to get library data from a variety of sources that have already been found.

Amazon covers are also a problem as they are not on LT servers, and can change if Amazon changes them.

Note on the money issue, LT is an international site, and many of us purchase books in several currencies. That makes adding them up rather difficult, even just with currencies that still exist (in my case, at least 5) never mind all the pre-Euro ones (at least another 6).

Also people have different wishes about what they want prices for. You are interested in what you paid. Others are more interested in current value. It's not straightforward.

ETA Forgot Canadian dollar. And if my husband brings me a textile book from Bangkok this summer, that will add another one. Hmm. There are a few cookbooks from Latin America, too..

>1 judico51: You can always put stuff like that into Comments or Personal Comments and format it so that it is easy to extract from the Excel export file. But it is not a standard data field in LT, so not as easy as the Booxter app.

Using library sources will get subject headings often. If entering books one by one, rather than mass import, you can check if your source has them. Clicking on ? beside each entry found will open all data to be imported.

As mentioned already, even if the source you used does not have them, you'll still see them (in green) if someone else entered a record for that book with subject headings included. To see them in your catalogue, I think you need to add that column to one of your styles as it's not there by default IIRC. You can have 5 different styles (labelled A-E in Your Books) which you can set up to show what you want. Just click the settings next to styles and drag the columns you want from the right pane, and drag to the right pane those you want to remove. Save changes in the end

>5 bnielsen: Private Comments is probably the better choice unless you want all and sundry to see what books you have that might be valuable.

>7 MarthaJeanne: Good point. They are all priceless :-)

>4 MarthaJeanne: A high class problem to have, MarthaJeanne! ;-)

Thanks all! Your explanations and suggestions are helpful and most appreciated. I will check to see what subj. headings have been uploaded at other libraries and I'll see if I can add them on.
Coincidentally, prices have now started popping up for many of the books. I was just interested in finding out what how much I've spent in aggregate. Not a pressing issue or even necessary. I was just interested.
If I can prevail on you for two other answers, I added a Movie collection and input three movies in that collection. I subsequently noticed that they are also in my main Library collection. I tried to remove them from the library collection but then got the prompt asking me if I wanted to remove them from all of my collections so I didn't delete them. Is there any way not to save them with my book collection? And can I make sub collections for foreign films, documentaries, etc.?)
Finally, is there a place to list Table of Contents or should I just include them in the comments section? I've somehow missed it if there already is a box for that.
Again, thanks in advance. I so appreciate your helpfulness and friendliness. You've made feel immediately comfortable here! At some point, I hope I too can pay it forward!

>10 judico51: On the collections question - I suspect you pressed the red x at the end of the line in the catalog thinking it will remove them from the current collection. That is a complete delete. Instead go to the icon that looks like an envelope/start music kind of thing (the 3rd in the line of 5, one icon (the pencil) apart from the x). That will allow you to edit the collections. Uncleck "Your Library" for those books and you are all set.

You can do the same from the book page or in bulk via Power Edit. But as there are only 3, you may as well do it via the catalog :)

Table of contents: comments is the only place (mainly because on the work level, we combine the same collection with different introduction for example -- which makes the table of contents on the work level problematic). Now... for some books, if you look at the work page, the Contains in part of the relationships may list the contents (or as many of them that have separate work IDs). But that is not guaranteed and it can be changed. So if you want it, add it to your own record - either in one of the comments fields, or in Publication - they all are not aggregating ones. Don't put that as a review - it will get flagged (not that it will make it invisible for you but... not nice:) ).

(Edit: typo above).

Thanks so much! I did press the red x. I will now follow your suggestion and be very happy!
I suspected that I'll have to put TOC in my comments field. Not a problem.
Thanks for your quick and helpful response!

>12 judico51: Have fun :) And welcome to LT!

Yes welcome, and ask away if you have questions or wonder whether something can be done more easily. LT has a wealth of options, but it can take a while to learn your way around well. Many of us learned a lot through Talk, either by asking or generally following such discussions. I still discover some things I didn't know were possible after all the years :)

Regarding collections, when adding individually you can change them BEFORE doing the search (just below the search box). Whatever you choose sticks until you change it again before you search for another one. On the website that is, don't remember how it works if scanning by app, but I assume there's something equivalent.