Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I couldn't find a search string that brings up any results for this question, so here goes:

I've noticed that when people add multiple copies of a book to their shelves (they probably don't explore the site enough to know about combining), and then someone later combines all the appropriate editions, that person will still have all the editions on their shelf. Is this intended? It leads to people's profiles saying they have 100 books when they really have 5 copies of 20 books.

My guess is that it is on purpose, and there's at least one good reason for this. Sometimes someone might legitimately want to rate two versions of the same book (and even give different ratings).

For example, I have The Hobbit on my shelf twice: once as the text and once as a graphic novelization of it. I personally consider these separate works and I rate them differently because while the graphic novel is good, it isn't as good as the original text (IMHO). At one point I had separated the graphic novel from the primary text on GoodReads, but someone else later recombined them and I didn't feel it was important enough to quibble over since there is some ambiguity as to what qualifies as "the same" for combining purposes. Similarly, I could also see people wanting to give different ratings to the text and an audiobook or even to different audiobook versions of the same book (since one could certainly be performed better than another).

Another reason is ownership; people may own multiple copies of a book (for example, in a few cases I have hardback and paperback copies of the same book; I owned the paperback first and bought the hardback when I had an opportunity to get them autographed by the author) and want their shelves to display this (I don't personally use GoodReads as a strict inventory of what I own [more semi-strict], but I'm sure others do).

Any sort of auto-merger would end up causing people to lose books that they legitimately waned multiple copies of; it's better for them to manually purge by going to the find duplicates option and working from there (although perhaps this option could be made more obvious).

Other reasons to have multiple editions of the same book:
* audiobook and text
* different translations
* other details specific to a given edition, such as foreword, illustrations, etc.


Any sort of auto-merger would end up causing people to lose books that they legitimately waned multiple copies of; it's better for them to manually purge by going to the find duplicates option and working from there

Agreed!

Perhaps there could be some way to allow users to easily choose to discard multiple copies? While I agree those reasons above for why someone might want them, the friends I've been looking at don't seem to fall under that category. I know I dive head-first into the community aspect of sites like this and learn all about the behind-the-scenes stuff, but most people probably don't and therefore don't realize some things are possible (ie - combining editions).

Then again, if THEY'RE not bothered by having lots of copies of one book cluttering their shelves, I suppose I shouldn't be either. I'm just a little OCD. :) I guess I'm just all for letting even the most casual user easily know all of GR's functions and features, since many of them aren't going to go clicking all over looking for them.

There is one. :)

Go to My Books, and select the Edit view. Click on Find Duplicates, and any duplicates will show up. You can then easily delete or any an of the results.

Michael: Please tell me that The Hobbit paperback and The Hobbit Graphic Novel are not considered the same book on Goodreads. Those really are separate books with different content and different authors (well, the graphic novel would have a different author as it would need a script made out of the original material). If those are merged, they need to be separated. I'll look at it later.

Lasairfiona, they are. And I completely agree with you. I had separated them when I first joined, but someone recombined them a week or so later. I just went and checked and the specific edition I was talking about was still combined with the general text. I just separated it (so unless someone puts it back since I posted this) it will appear independent, but there are probably other versions mixed into the global list.

There is one. :)

*smacks head*

I've never spent any time in the "edit" view! This looks like a useful mode.

Edit: it'd be awesome if you could delete right from the "find duplicates" result page. I found a duplicate on my shelves, but removing it didn't seem to be an option on that page.

I've never spent any time in the "edit" view! This looks like a useful mode.

The day GR added that was one of my happiest here (today/yesterday is pretty close, though ;) ). It is AWESOME.

It would be nice to be able to delete from the duplicate result page, but it's not too bad. Choose "edit my review" and then "delete from my shelves." Then just use the back button to get to the results again.

Michael, it may be the auto-combine that's the problem. Last time we had a similar issue with a graphic novel, the decision was to make the original author secondary (tertiary in this case) and list the graphic novel's author(s) as primary. I have done that for this book. Should keep it from getting recombined. And it's really more accurate, IMO.

Rivka, that makes sense. I'll have to keep an eye out for similar cases.

I believe I caught all the ones labeled graphic novel. But I am not going through the other 200 editions of The Hobbit looking for stowaways. ;)

I just went and checked my duplicates out of curiosity and was really irritated to see a bunch of incorrectly combined books in there listed as duplicates that were not there a few weeks ago (e.g., The First Book of Swords and The First Book of Lost Swords are completely different books, despite the similar names).

I don't know if this is due to auto-combine or not, but is that even a necessary or useful feature? I've never tried using it because almost every author I've ever looked at was either trivially easy to combine or so complicated that any sort of auto-method would clearly be doomed to failure. I've been concerned that using it would cause more problems than it would solve.

If the title (except for what's in parentheses) is identical, the auto-combine will combine them. Otherwise -- even if the difference is a single letter capitalized/lowercase, having/lacking punctuation mark, etc. -- it does not. Some of The Hobbits only had "graphic novel" parenthetically; the Swords books must have been combined by hand.

I realize undoing other librarians' mistakes can be frustrating, but it's going to happen pretty inevitably, with or without auto-combine. And I find auto-combine useful sometimes.