Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Is it still the case that the URL field on a book record should point to, for example, the book-specific page on a publisher site and NOT to the homepage or other general advertising blurb?

I've noticed a librarian who is also a publisher has added loads of homepage links to their books (including editions of Cadfael). Before I remove them I want to be sure we have not changed the rules.

Links should be to a specific page for the book, on publisher or author sites or any site not general pages as far as I'm aware also. In addition, if a selling publisher it must also provide additional information about the book rather than be a link to a page selling the book.

Paula wrote: "Links should be to a specific page for the book, on publisher or author sites or any site not general pages as far as I'm aware also. In addition, if a selling publisher it must also provide addit..."

So, not this page then...
http://headofzeus.com/

No, I would delete that, it links only to the publishers home page not a specific book page

Paula wrote: "No, I would delete that, it links only to the publishers home page not a specific book page"

Agreed. One large Nespresso and a bunch of deletes coming up.

So for this edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... / Human Choices

Instead of url to publisher home page (http://mmromancegroup.com/ ) it should probably be http://www.mmromancegroup.com/human-c... ?

And, since when did goodreads become a publisher? Maybe the publisher name should be "M/M Romance Group" or "MMRomanceGroup.com"?

There are a ton of these books all linking to the publisher home page instead of the book page on publisher site (and listing @ goodreads, goodreads, - goodreads, and other variations in the publisher name).

I'm not listing all of them but if anyone wants a project, the publisher page has a nice list alpha by author or staff might be able to run a script to at least clean up the publisher name.

D.A.-bully victims suffer more than a ★ on their commercial product wrote: "So for this edition at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Instead of url to publisher home page (http://mmromancegroup.com/ ) it should probably be http://www.mmromancegro..."

Yup. But not just a selling page. Not just an order form.

D.A.-bully victims suffer more than a ★ on their commercial product wrote: "So for this edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... / Human Choices

Instead of url to publisher home page (http://mmromancegroup.com/ ) it should probab..."

I'll fix them

Uhmmm...is goodreads allowed to use competing booksites as official urls? Like Fictiondb.com on this book: Once Burned and many, many others I'm seeing. On at least one thread (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... ) Rivka said "no."

I didn't think Fictiondb was even an acceptable data source for librarians to use.
Https://www.google.com/#q=url+fiction... shows a good starting list since librarians cannot search on goodreads by the official url field.

Leonie's Luck , The Surgeon's Secret, Sheikh Surgeon ...

(I initially spotted because one of my photos of an oop (rare-ish) bookcover I uploaded to fictiondb with manually typed in back of book blurb "magically" showed up here as well including my own accidental typo -- I used google to search to get back to fix my typo and wasn't really looking for this issue. I don't care about that particular bit of data but I do want to know if amazon has bought out fictiondb so that they are now an acceptable data source [or what the reason is that they are now acceptable data source] so I can decide if I want to continue volunteering as Editor on that site.)

I'm also seeing author websites listed as being on fictiondb, amazon, kobo and other booksellers. For example, Melissa Hepburne, Amanda York, Jocelyn Carew ...

Fictiondb.com is definitely a no. Kobo and other booksellers I would say no for both author and book pages.

Amazon might be the only exception and only for the author pages, I'm not sure we've ever gotten a staff option on that. I could maybe see it for KDP authors, but I wouldn't seek out to add it.

If they are claimed profiles, the author may put links to any of the above on their profile. For unclaimed author profiles, a link to the author's official site, or no link at all.

rivka wrote: "If they are claimed profiles, the author may put links to any of the above on their profile. For unclaimed author profiles, a link to the author's official site, or no link at all."

Thanks Rivka!

Thanks Rivka! I thought it was odd that fictiondb would be since manual still says that even Library Thing isn't a valid source (and they are partly amazon owned).