Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

It's the kind of thing a computer probably wouldn't pick up, but a librarian can easily see when a book is apparently popular through a likely case of mistaken identity: for example, 9,045 people have added Franz Kafka's The Castle when, in all likelihood, most of them probably meant to add The Castle to their shelves.

Not everyone cares about shelving the precise edition of a book that they read but this is obviously a bit different - a different book rather than a different edition. It also has implications for other readers - when a book becomes popular it rises to the top of the lists in recommendations and in searches. In this case, for example, the play script based upon the novel has been added 3,000 more times than the novel itself, meaning that it's more likely to appear higher in searches and so perpetuate the problem.

I'm guessing there probably isn't, but is there anyway that GoodReads can flag this for people? For now I've added a note to the description of this particular book which hopefully may help some people adding it for the first time. It does nothing for those who've already added it erroneously, however, and I'm sure there must be other examples of this kind of thing lurking in the system too.

but how would GR know if they had indeed shelved the wrong book? maybe those 9k people did intend to shelve the book...

I'm kinda thinking they should have realized it when they saw the photo, saying "dramatization."

Dee wrote: "but how would GR know if they had indeed shelved the wrong book? maybe those 9k people did intend to shelve the book..."

As I said, there's no way that Good Reads could know - but a librarian has the capacity to infer.

Beth wrote: "I'm kinda thinking they should have realized it when they saw the photo, saying "dramatization." "

True, but that presupposes that they looked at the image. Presumably people adding books who aren't interested in the edition don't look too carefully at the image. A lot of the reviews on that dramatisation are clearly discussing the novel. I confess I only looked harder when I thought how bizarre it was that there were no other editions of the book listed!

This really isn't something that's within the GR Librarians' responsibilities.

If you have an idea on a system enhancement or policy addition/change to address this issue, you'd want to post that here: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1...