Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I'm a newly minted librarian, so I'm not sure if what I want to do is acceptable. Collected stories by Willa Cather has two paperback editions in the database: https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
One of these has an older cover than my personal copy, and the other, titled Willa Cather, collected stories seems to have been added by a user unnecessarily. Its pagination, publisher, etc., is the same as the other edition. The user did not (likely could not) add an isbn. I would like to edit the title and details of this second record and add the different cover, effectively making it an alternate cover record. Is this acceptable per goodreads policy?

Hi Monica,

It is helpful in the future to post links to each edition in question. I assume you mean this one:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Because that edition has been shelved by users, if you were to edit it to become a different edition (changing the details to match your personal copy), the users who had shelved that particular edition would see a different book on their shelves than what they had shelved. So no, what you've proposed really isn't consistent with policy.

Instead, since the superfluous edition is a duplicate of an existing edition, the two should be merged. That way, all the users that shelved the duplicate edition will retain that shelved edition after the merge.

Then, separately, make an alternate cover edition with the info from your personal copy.

Ah, excellent! Thank you for the information. For future reference, how do I see who has shelved particular editions? Do I just look in the stats?

probably the easiest thing is to go to the combine page, then let your mouse hover over 'details' for a given edition. in the window that appears, you'll see the number of times a particular edition has been 'added'. this is better than just looking at ratings for a given edition, because 'additions' includes users who have shelved the book without rating it yet (i.e., to their to-read shelf).

In my opinion, and what I wrote in my application, is to be honest about why you would like to become a Goodreads librarian.

You have a reason why you want to apply as a librarian, haven't you? And that is what you should write in the text box. Everyone has his/her own reasons and you shouldn't just copy the reasons of other people.

Mahmoud wrote: "because i really want them to accepting me "

what is it you want to accomplish as a librarian?

If there are just a few specific books you want edited, you can post here in the Librarians Group and ask.

Mahmoud wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Mahmoud wrote: "because i really want them to accepting me "

what is it you want to accomplish as a librarian?"

i want to modify some books and edit them and i want to ..."

Then that is what you should put in the text box. When I applied I put in my specific reasons and as there was a need for that type of assistance at the time, I was granted librarian status. It just depends on what is needed at the time you apply.

With all the bad data from automatic Amazon imports, I can't imagine there's less of a need for librarians now than there used to be.