Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Just a quick question regarding valid information sources on Goodreads: why isn't Google Books a valid source? It's not a bookseller website. It's a database, not entirely dissimilar to WorldCat. Is it just because Goodreads is owned by a big huge corporation that doesn't like the other big huge corporation, or is there some deeper reason that I'm missing?

Hi, it's due to copyright of images and data. Basically the only bookseller exception is Amazon its subsidiaries, and that's because Amazon owns Goodreads.

Worldcat: stores data about books, but not the book content itself.
Google Books: stores book content (you can buy and download the book to read = bookseller).

annob wrote: "Google Books: stores book content (you can buy and download the book to read = bookseller)."

But Google Books isn't a bookseller, just a database. It provides links to other bookseller websites where you can buy books, but you can't actually buy books through Google Books. You can buy books on Google Play, which is Google's equivalent of iTunes, but not on Google Books itself.

I guess I bow out then, and hopefully someone with more legal knowledge will respond.

Librarything is also not a bookseller and not an acceptable source. Just not being a bookseller is not enough.
Librarians have no insight in the specific reasons why something is not an acceptable source.

Arenda wrote: "Librarians have no insight in the specific reasons why something is not an acceptable source."

Good to know. Do you think I should put ATTN: Jaclyn in the title to see if we can get an answer from Goodreads staff?

Arenda wrote: "Librarything is also not a bookseller and not an acceptable source. Just not being a bookseller is not enough."

I mean, I kinda get why LibraryThing isn't a valid source, since it's a social cataloging site like Goodreads and not a more traditional database. Still confused about why Google Books wouldn't be a valid source, unless the answer is "because this site is owned by a company that doesn't like Google".

It might have something to do with this:* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodrea...

I don't know the legal ins and outs, but I'm guessing that Google would be more likely to have restrictions/requirements for using their data than WorldCat.

*Someone at Amazon definitely wrote that paragraph—'no data was lost' is absolute bollocks. The change resulted in a whole bunch of 'Unknown Book 213390 by Unknown Author 30624' listings that no longer had title/author/etc.; you can still find loads of them on Goodreads. (Then Amazon bought Goodreads and the whole thing became moot, and removal of data turned into bots importing hundreds of thousands of garbage records...)

Liralen wrote: "I don't know the legal ins and outs, but I'm guessing that Google would be more likely to have restrictions/requirements for using their data than WorldCat."

Google having restrictions makes sense, I guess. And I'd also guess that Goodreads staff doesn't have anyone available to dig through Google Books' terms and conditions to decide whether or not they'd be able to use it as a source for ISBNs or whatever.

Liralen wrote: "*Someone at Amazon definitely wrote that paragraph—'no data was lost' is absolute bollocks."

A huge corporation sending their PR people to lie about something that made them look bad in order to try to keep their image intact? I am shocked. Shocked! ...well, not that shocked.

Anyways, thanks for the input. Not going to mark the thread as "[ANSWERED]" quite yet just in case any other librarians want to chime in, but I'll probably do that in a few days if the thread doesn't get any more activity.

Closing this thread as it's going off topic. Please keep in mind the Librarians Group is an official Goodreads group, for answering questions about the catalog. It's not the place for commentary on Amazon or Goodreads in general.