Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I jsut kicked of a isbn db data importer, like the ingram importer I'm oing going to let it update 10 thousand books (as a sample set), and it's only touching the author, title, isbn, and isbn13 fields.


If you see anything unusual with this data, please let me know!

Can you give us a range of books within the sample set so we know which ones to check on? Or would any mistakes be so glaringly obvious we couldn't miss them? :)

the isbndb file is going in alphabetical order. I looked over a sample set, and I seemed like it was alright, but just if you happen to see anything screwed up, and the librarian log is attributed to 'isbndb' please let me know!

got it. will keep an eye out.

I have noticed that addaitional versions of names are being added and on some where initials are involved there are spaces.

While not unusual since that is how it has been in the past with GR importer scripts, should we clean up the data I.e remove duplicate authors and remove spaces or leave alone for the time being?

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...

Not Ingram and I cannot work out if a import issue but books by Lew Wallace have been imported under

Lew^^Wallace

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Correct profile = Lew^Wallace

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

the second of those was from onix feed direct from publisher. (which hopefully isn't running anymore).


The first one does seem like a flaw in the data. I'll keep an eye on it.

I found an issue with what looks like an import from Lulu. It's created the author w this Author's Spotlight, which I suspect is a truncation of "View this Author's Spotlight" which appears on the book pages on Lulu.

It looks like some books have that phrase in the by-line, which is being imported without the first 3 characters to remove "by," so it may not be easily fixable?

There are 135 books in the author, so I'll wait to hear whether it can be cleaned up or not before I do anything. ;)

I'll work on reverting those tomorrow.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Also seems to have some wonky imports. I don't know if they're all directly related or not.

Sorry to throw so much at you, I'm sure things are crazy there!

I accidentally noticed a wonky data edit made by isbndb. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini was changed to <> Thousand Splendid Suns. I don't know if that needs to be mentioned here. Anyway, I fixed it.

better sooner than later.

the isbndb import is almost done. we might make another pass for extra data (page numbers/publsiher, publication date, etc).

If you could include format (paperback, hardcover) from isbndb that would be great. There are one of only a few sites that I have found that include that info (most library systems don't).

Laura wrote: "I accidentally noticed a wonky data edit made by isbndb."

Laura, so it added those extra <<>> symbols, but didn't otherwise change the title?

@15: Yep.

Weird. Let us know if you see any other examples, please.

Laura wrote: "I accidentally noticed a wonky data edit made by isbndb. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini was changed to <> Thousand Splendid Suns.

Is this isbndb's way of handling sort-by?

Cait wrote: "Laura wrote: "I accidentally noticed a wonky data edit made by isbndb. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini was changed to > Thousand Splendid Suns.

Is this isbndb's way of handling sort-by?"

It doesn't look like it.

The isbndb page for the edition Laura edited has the << >> around the A, but none of the other editions do.

I looked again at the Author Unknown profile I reported last night and it looks like some books have the Author Unknown in the isbndb database - we might just have to fix them as they come in.

This book as well as one I already fixed were imported from ingram with the publisher as the author.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Ingram changed the author to "Author Habu" instead of the single-name Habu.

I promise I'm not trying to find problems, I just keep stumbling over them!

Michael, if any of these are things librarians are just going have to clean up, let me know and I'll get to work - I'm just not sure what's actually a problem with the imports and what is a side effect that librarians will have to fix anyway. :P

Is the import finished? If so it missed one:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66...

I just rescued this book using the data from here:

http://isbndb.com/d/publisher/trumpe_...

Ingram and isbndb both updated the title, but for whatever reason failed to update the author.

Both of those flat file imports are finished.

Another oddity, someone has fixed it, but the logs are there.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24...

Out of the Shadows was changed by Ingram to be One Crazy Christmas: 10 Copy Counter Display.