Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Suggested text from mlady_rebecca:

The number of pages in a book is meant to include all content including afterwords, notes, indexes, and glossaries. Advertisements for future books and preview chapters are not included in the page count. Introductory material paged using roman numerals is not included in the total page count.

Anyone have any suggestions of changes, etc.? I'll give it a day or two and then add it to the manual.

That looks great- good job guys!

Please mention what to put for audiobooks, ebooks, etc.? I've been meaning to ask for ages since some books on CD have the number of pages set to the number of CD's and some don't. I do not know if that is the correct thing to do or if the number of pages should be left blank.

Edit: I know there is something on the TODO list about this in the feedback group, but what should we do for now?

Ebooks vary. The ones I have (eReader) will re-paginate depending how big you make the window size. Therefore any sort of numbering is meaningless. But I believe some eBooks have fixed numbering.

The only ebooks with meaningful page numbers are PDF versions. As for audiobooks, we can make it the number of discs, number of chapters -- I've seen people do both. Best if there's a consensus though. Which is more useful?

Or should it just be blank?

Updating to include appendices, mentioned in another thread:

The number of pages in a book is meant to include all content including afterwords, appendices, notes, indexes, and glossaries. Advertisements for future books and preview chapters are not included in the page count. Introductory material paged using roman numerals is not included in the total page count.

My vote would be to leave things blank for audiobooks, but I'm not a frequent audiobook reader.

Neither am I, and I think the librarians who have been editing in "pages" may be.

I'm a big audiobook fan and I would like to see something in the number of pages. I'm suggesting the number of chapters. The main reason being that it is the only thing I can think of for downloaded audiobooks. You could also put the same information for a variable page ebook (to keep in line with printed books, count the number of chapters plus indices, glossaries, etc?). The one drawback about that is having to know the number of chapters in the book which isn't always readily apparent with audiobooks, whereas a number of CD's or cassettes would be. Even if the decision is to leave the information blank, please mention that in the manual for clarification.

Hi There,
Just got librarian status, and I'm looking to ensure that the book I'm currently reading is properly edited. I've scoured a good portion of the discussion posts, and I'm wondering what the page count ruling would be.
Parker The Hunter
The printed page count at the end of the story is 140. There is one blank page, then a "special thanks" page. Not sure if special thanks falls under "afterwords, notes, indexes, and glossaries". Then there is an ad for the next book in 2010, and a blank last page.
Currently the entry has 144 listed as a page count. Should it really be 142, or 140?
Also would this be cause for a more finely tuned definition for material following the main numbered text?

The current rule would be to include the "special thanks", but exclude the ad. So 142 pages.

I'm not sure that we can think of every term someone is going to use for some sort of end material. Is there a catch all category, or should we just continue to expand the list as needed? As far as I recall, ads and preview chapters are the only things we exclude.

*looks at a random book on my desk* Author's bios could also be included in that list. And acknowledgments.

Non-fiction books tend to throw more variety of things at the end than fiction books do. And that's not even looking at what a textbook may have.

I include author bios and acknowledgments. I read them. To me, they seem as though they're part of the book. I also include discussion questions if they're for that particular book. No ads or mentions of other books.

Non-fiction I include indexes and notes.

I hope I'm doing it correctly. I do read every post in this group, but there are times I forget what the consensus has been.

Lisa, that's what we were trying to do with this thread. Write the rules for the librarian manual.

Ok, updated the proposed rule again. I'm not sure we ever reached a decision with respect to audio books.

The number of pages in a book is meant to include all content except for advertisements and preview chapters for other books. Valid end material may include acknowledgments, afterwords, appendices, author biographies, glossaries, indexes, notes, and suggested discussion questions.

Introductory material paged using roman numerals is not included in the total page count.

Most e-book formats do not have a fixed number of pages since the pagination adjusts for screen size. For PDF specific editions, or any other fixed page e-books, the normal paging rules may be used.

For audio books, paging does not apply.

I'm a frequent audiobook listener. I've been entering the number of CDs into the page number slot. To me, this makes the most sense, as it is a common way of measuring length of audiobooks, and the information is readily available, where the number of chapters, corresponding pages, or even length (in hours and minutes) may NOT be available. Usually the set of discs will give you the total length in hours and minutes for the whole audiobook. It's not terribly common to see the chapters given. I don't think I've EVER seen page numbers...

In the future, I hope goodreads will have separate sections to put number of discs/cassettes and total length of the audiobook, so that this confusion will disappear. But for now, I like to have something in the page section so that I can use the status update features while listening.

(Is there a more official thread where people are discussing the audiobook issue? I'd love to take part in it...)

At the moment, this is it. :)

I think we have one vote for chapters (except that's very difficult to know) and one for discs/cassettes. Maybe one of you audiobook listeners wouldn't mind conducting a poll in the audiobook group(s)?


Rebecca, that looks great. As soon as the audiobook issue is resolved, I'll put it up.

Link to Audiobook group:
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/5...

Poll:
http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/20...

Thanks, Sara. Can you please clarify that the options are EXCLUSIVE, we can't use two? Also that this is a temporary workaround, until the percentage-complete option is added. That is, we will still be using the current "number of pages" field for right now.

It looks like hours is winning by a significant margin. My only question is where one would get that information from?

The back of the CD case, on the audiobook website. The information is readily available. I'm really being brought around to this hours thing. I think it would work best for all different types of audiobooks (CDs, downloads, MP3 versions, etc.) I think it's pretty genius!

In the future, I think it would be nice to have length in time (hours and minutes) available for audio versions of books, even if only for record-keeping purposes.

That is certainly information that can be added to the description field.

(Oh and percentage-complete is just my shorthand for the upcoming feature. Exactly how it will work and what format is will take has not yet been determined, I think.)

That's good. If we have to calculate our own percentages to enter into the box, that might get a little complicated... I suppose we could just make an estimate...

Many ebook readers will give percent-complete. And whatever gets added has to accommodate both ebooks and audiobooks.

Looks like hours is the winner by a significant margin.

"Page count" is now in the manual.

If i may add to the audio book discussion from a non-librian audio book user (CD format) - i'm noticing that the audio listings are far less standardized than the paper versions. A quick survey of the 18 i've listened to so far this year shows that 4 of them had no cover image, 15 of them had no pages or CD's or hours - so no way to track progress, 2 had the number of CD's listed as pages and 1 had the number of pages for the paper book. Two of them had the fact they were CD's in the title.

I like the idea of hours. It's standard across audio editions and formats. And it's an easy way to track. I'm like a lot of people who listen to audio books in my car. When i change CD's i have a good idea how long i've listened.

Part of the fun of this site is being able to track my progress reading a book. It would be great to have that same ability for the audio books.

Thanks for all your work on this database! It's not easy keeping up with such a huge database!!

donna

Donna wrote: "Part of the fun of this site is being able to track my progress reading a book. It would be great to have that same ability for the audio books."

This has been requested in the Feedback group before, and it's on the to-do list. Until that's done, there hasn't really been a librarian consensus on how to use the "pages" field for audiobooks, so most of us have been leaving it blank, I think.

As for titles and cover art being incorrect, you can always bring a link to this group with a request for correction (a link to the correct cover art is also helpful). Information like "abridged" or "unabridged" is usually left in the title field, but "2 CDs" or "audio cassettes" shouldn't be! Edit: Which I see in the next thread up you've already been doing -- thank you! :)

Hi Cait!

I did post the ones missing cover art and the requests were handled with great efficiency!

thanks for the response. I work with databases as part of my job and i know how hard it is to keep such a large database under control, especially when multiple people have access. You all do a great job.

thanks!

donna

Cait, a consensus WAS reached:

rivka wrote: "Looks like hours is the winner by a significant margin.

"Page count" is now in the manual."

rivka wrote: "Cait, a consensus WAS reached:

rivka wrote: "Looks like hours is the winner by a significant margin."

Oops! Thanks for reminding me!

So... this conversation leads me to ask... is there something i can do to add hours to at least the audio books i'm interested in? I'm not interested in doing this kinda stuff full time but while i've got the CD in hand or looking up the info on it i'd be more than happy to bring the listing up to date.

thanks!

Sure. Either post here asking for an update, or become a librarian and do it yourself.

If you do become a librarian, there's no obligation to do it full time either. You're free to do as little or as much as you'd like.

Well... apparently i'm not allowed to become a librarian until i've posted 50 books. And since i've only got 32 books posted i guess i'm not committed enough, regardless of my active participation on the site for almost 9 months :) Ah, yes, the old quantity proves quality :) Not complaining, just smiling ironically. sorry, but i'm really enjoying only posting what i've read for this year so i guess i'll just have to pass on the invitation to be a librarian until i read 50 books.

in the meanwhile do you really want my list of 18 CD's so that the number of hours can be added to them? I'll be happy to provide it if you'd like.

thanks!!

donna

Donna,

Sure, you can post. In this group we're always happy to help out in that way.

If you have 18 books you can put on your to-read (and currently reading) shelves, I think books on all shelves count toward the fifty. I'm not positive about that though. Even if they don't, you'll be up to that fifty number relatively soon.

Lisa wrote: "I think books on all shelves count toward the fifty."

Correct.

Donna wrote: "Well... apparently i'm not allowed to become a librarian until i've posted 50 books. And since i've only got 32 books posted i guess i'm not committed enough, regardless of my active participation on the site for almost 9 months :) ..."

rivka wrote: "Lisa wrote: "I think books on all shelves count toward the fifty."

Correct."

Yep, just add 18 books you want to read to your to-read shelf or 18 books you read when you were younger (favorite childhood books, high school, etc.), and voilà!