Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

There is a new "sort by title" field on the edit page for all books. Currently, the "about" link shows these basic instructions:
This field is for sorting by book title. So for a book titled "The Da Vinci Code", you'd put "Da Vinci Code, The"

However, there are more nuances to alphabetization. Can you weigh in and help us expand these guidelines? How should we handle books that are a part of a series? (ex. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader [The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 5]). How should we handle complex titles? (ex. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West). What other issues do you anticipate?

Thanks!

Are the sort titles going to show anywhere, or will they just be used for the sort while the regular titles are visible? If they're not going to show, I'd suggest dropping series and subtitles entirely....

First: Thanks for implementing this!

Second, the way I see it, series could be handled two ways: You could (a) put the series information at the beginning of the sort title, which would sort books in a series together (in order if numbered properly), or (b) you could leave it out completely. The problem with (a) is that people who didn't know (or didn't want) it sorted by series would be very confused by what otherwise appeared to be sorting errors.

Some of the rules may have to be created as we go along and see where problems or ambiguities occur.

One issue (which I do not know the answer to) is what about books which begin with numbers? Should the number be translated into text for sorting purposes or left as a number?

Also, a question: is the capitalization of the sort field important? I ask because the first book I happened to look at had the auto-generated sort-field filled in with all lowercase letters. I know in the combine editions page capitalization affects the sort order, so if it is important it should be added to the instructions.

Hmmm....I just noticed that the sort field isn't actually being used yet. I only have three books on one shelf and they are being alphabetized by the title not by the sort title. Is it supposed to be working or is there a delay to let the new field propagate before changing the sorting?

I just looked at the first five titles on my "all" shelf that begin with "A". The sort field on all of them has been updated, but the first two letters of the first "real" word were missing on every book and everything was lowercase. Example: A Doll's House was showing up as ll's house, a until I fixed it. Is this a bug or a librarian doing something incorrectly? I can't find anything like this in any of the books' librarian change logs.

Michael, mine aren't sorting correctly yet either. But I'm glad that we're finally getting this capability!

Yes, thanks for doing this!

One thing I just noticed that I wondered if it could be changed: when editing a book, GR gets unhappy if the sort by field is blank. Couldn't it just auto-fill with the contents of the title field -- only in cases where the sort-by field is blank, of course?

I'm totally lost on this whole "sort by" issue. All I can see on my page (of anything that says "sort") is through editting my bookshelves. There is a disable sorting and enable sorting... yet, they do not give me the option of HOW to do this.

Can anyone explain this to me? I'd like to sort by author, if I can. This just sorts it by whatever it wishes, it seems. There's no order to it. :(

mathilda,

This thread is talking about dropping the The, A, etc. at the beginning of titles from the sort.

Enable and disable sorting is a bit different from what you're talking about: they're there, if you enable sorting, to sort the books on your shelves exactly as you want. I use it for my to-read list to select the order in which I want to read the books, so that title, author, etc. don't matter in that sort.

What you're asking is possible. When you go to "my books" there are different views and different ways to view. Several views show authors.

When you're in a view that shows "author" as a field, click on "author" and your books will shelve A to Z or Z to A. Click "author" again and it will show in alphabetical order in the opposite direction.

The views that show the authors are: main, list, and print.

I have some questions regarding this:
1. Should punctuation be included in the 'sort by' title? It seems intuitive that punctuation like ", ', (, and .... should be left out of the beginning of a title, but what about internal punctuation?
2. Is there a reason why in combined editions, each sort field has to be filled out separately? For librarians initially populating this field, it seems like having it apply to all books in a combined edition would be helpful. I can see how in some cases this would not be desirable (same book republished under a different name) - but otherwise this will be quite a job for librarians. (Unless you implement an autofill of the sort field, as suggested in comment 6.) Is there a way you could allow a librarian to select between populating all combined sort titles and only a single edition?

I will be waiting for further guidance before I spend much time adding sort titles - particularly concerning punctuation and capitalization.

I think there is an auto-fill, but it may take a long time to propagate given the size of the DB. About 2/3 of the books I looked at (not very many total, but still 2/3) already had sort titles, all in lowercase. These were not done by a librarian.

A punctuation issue which might effect sorting: spaces after a colon. In the web, we tend to ignore this because html parsers auto-reduce multiple spaces to a single space (except in cases like the use of <pre> formatted text). However, I assume the sort field will be based on the actual text and not some html translation, which means that spaces will be used as part of the sort field...

I think the correct English grammar is to have two spaces after a colon, but many people have a tendency to use just one. We should standardize the number of spaces or else we'll have incorrect sorting due to differences in the number of spaces. For example (I'll use ^ to indicate a space):

Book:^^The Problem
Book:^Answers

Alphabetically, "The Problem" should sort after "Answers", but the extra space would case them to sort as I have above in most standard alpha-numeric sort algorithms (spaces generally have priority in sorting before any visible characters).

Yes, I'm one of the culprits who normally use just one space after a colon, but I'm happy to change for Goodreads purposes.

The most important part is consistency; whether it is one or two spaces is not that important to me (grammar be damned!)

Michael, I agree but I'd guess that most here use proper grammar and punctuation. Whatever is decided is fine with me.

Thanks Lisa!

I understand now that y'all were talking about individual book profiles. I always wondered about that catagory, so I'm going in to some series to put them in order (such as Cate Tiernan's novels; not all of them are in order by 1,2,3, etc. since each number has a title that doesn't necessarily need to be alphabetical order, since it's a series).

Thanks for the note!

mathilda, Yes, lots of members use the sort for books in a series. It's another useful aspect of the bookshelf sort feature.

This was the database change at the top of my wish list--so I'm really grateful for it! Thanks!

As to series(es) :) it seems to me that maybe series order sorting should be handled separately from the non-filing character sorting we're talking about here. My guess is that most people who care about a series would rather see it in order--but which order? Some series' internal chronology doesn't match the publication order, so book #5 (by pub date) might actually be book #2 (by series chronology). I think it should continue to be a straight alphabetical title sort. Though it feels sort of greedy to be suggesting more database changes after getting the one I most wanted....

Oh, and my books are showing the same error JG reported, with the missing characters from the front of the title. That looks like a conversion error to me; should I bother correcting it, or will it be altered globally? I'm fine either way. Have I mentioned lately how much I really wanted this feature implemented? :)

Yes, it appears to be an auto-conversion error on any book where it converted a title which began with "A ..." It chops off the first two letters of the word following the A. I'm wondering if someone hardwired a three character chop for "the" or if it is something else.

I believe that double-spacing after colons, just like after a period, is considered outdated by most style guides. It was necessary when using typewriters because of the letter spacing issues -- issues which most computer fonts already compensate for.

That's good news: I have always used one space after each so I'd be happy if we decided on that. But, I'll stick to whatever the standard is at Goodreads.

Chicago Manual of Style

Rivka, Thanks for looking that up and posting the link. I'm delighted. :-)

Hi there - I'm fairly new, and had written to customer care about the "sort by" field not working when I sort by titles, so they directed me here.

I have been filling out the "sort by" field for books, and I have found that there is definitely some kind of automatic process that is chopping off the first two or three characters of each title--even when I've manually entered the title correctly. So if I enter "bait of dreams, a" for A Bait of Dreams, then save the record, and open it again to check, the "sort by" has become "it of dreams, a" instead of what I entered.

It might be advisable to update the directions to librarians to specify that "A," "An," and "The" be moved to the end of titles in the "sort by" field, as some people weren't aware of that standard.

I think that the practice of putting two spaces after a colon, like that of putting two spaces between sentences, was rendered obsolete by proportional fonts.

The erroneous auto-chopping only occurs for books which begin with "A ". Anything starting with "An" or "The" seems immune. I've never seen a book revert back, though, the way you describe (that is, where you enter it correctly and it still gets changed).

I think that the practice of putting two spaces after a colon, like that of putting two spaces between sentences, was rendered obsolete by proportional fonts.

Yup. :)

I had no idea that two spaces after a colon was obsolete. I'll have to change my writing practices. Out of curiosity, what about for a period at the end of a sentence? I know that you do not include the extra space if the text is full justified, but has it been eliminated completely?

Re: #27

The edits on the few books I've corrected seem to be sticking.

Are we going to have to fix all the "A" titles manually, or is Goodreads going to fix the bug that's causing the problem?

I know that you do not include the extra space if the text is full justified, but has it been eliminated completely?

All the style guides I am familiar with say to do away with it completely. MS Word is a great big wimp, and will let you set the default to be either one or two. ;)

Has it been established that punctuation bounding a title gets sorted before the words?

"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity

It seems to me this should be between the books Violet & Claire and Year of Wonders, for example.

Also, "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity has several editions that probably ought to be combined, including one that ought to be eliminated, if any of you wonderful librarians want to fix that.

Thanks!

I removed the quotes from the "sort by" title, and made sure all the author's books were combined.

Let me know if I missed something.

Thanks - looks good to me! I just hope the quotes aren't necessary to other members - because they are actually part of the title according to the author and publisher.

They are absolutely part of the title; just not of the sort-by title. Which makes perfect sense to me.

Understood, thanks.

Question RE series'.

I have a number of series' that currently don't sort well. eg: House of Night (series). Book 1 Marked sorts after book 2 Betrayed. I would rather them sort in order of book 1, book 2 etc.

The sort field would work well as: House of Night, #1, Marked

This is the exact opposite of the title field but i think would work well.

In case I missed other threads, what is the general consensus or decision on how to handle these?

This sounds like a completely separate issue. This thread's issue is complete; I am locking the thread.