Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

rivka wrote: "Ok, what did I forget from the FAQ thread? I'm sure theres quite a bit."

I have a few questions for Rivka, Otis, Peter, or whoever, having to do with how the Amazon-going-away change will affect editions that have been combined. I apologize in advance if the answers are obvious. I am relatively new to librarian-izing, and I have been focusing rather obsessively on combining books. As a result, there are a lot of aspects of Goodreads' book data processes that I don't understand too well yet. I also may not have understood aspects of the impending "upheaval".

I am focusing on classic books, for which there can be a lot of obscure volumes that represent little-read works, or collections of two or more works, that are not particularly popular on goodreads. Many of these books lack key information (including sometimes an ISBN number - or an accurate ISBN number), and many are reprints by public domain publishers (e.g., BiblioBazaar or Nabu) who do not seem to maintain very much useful about their publications. Trying to figure out how to combine these books is a special challenge, but can be enjoyable in a perverse sort of way.

It seems as if there could be a number of scenarios that could happen with these kinds of combined books when the Amazon data is removed.

1. The "primary" edition came from Amazon and is not rescued. (By "primary" [correct term?] I mean the edition that appears in listings as the "most popular" edition.) If this happens, will the other books that were combined under it stay together, presumably under the name of the second book on the list?

2. The book (whether or not it is the primary edition) is rescued, or is given new data automatically, and it turns out that, according to the new data, the book is actually a different book than what the librarian who originally combined it thought it was. For example, maybe due to some data inconsistency, "Volume 1" of War and Peace turns out to be, in reality, "Volume 2". (Or, to make it even more complicated, perhaps "Volume 1 of 2" turns out to be, in reality, "Volume 1 of 3".)

In this scenario, will the rescued book continue to be combined with the other books? If so, someone will eventually have to recombine it correctly. I'm not objecting to this result, I just would like to know.

3. If a book is automatically given new information to replace the Amazon data, will the old description be wiped out? The reason I am asking is that sometimes, in the book description, librarians who are combining books will provide information about the works that they have determined are included in that particular book. This is especially useful information to have when combining short story collections for a particular author. If the information is wiped out, some important information may be lost.

Thanks for considering these questions.

Any information not sourced from Amazon (including descriptions that have been added by librarians) should not be removed or replaced by imports. (FYI: If it were to accidentally be changed, the information would still be in the librarian log.)

Combining is separate from the book record, and will not be affected. That's true whether the combining is correct or not (like your Vol. 2 example).

rivka wrote: "Any information not sourced from Amazon (including descriptions that have been added by librarians) should not be removed or replaced by imports. (FYI: If it were to accidentally be changed, the in..."

Thanks, that's very helpful.

Regarding my example #1, where the "primary edition" has Amazon data: If it is not rescued, will it just disappear from the list of combined books under an author?

I don't have details of what books that have not been rescued will look like. However, the most popular edition is probably the least likely not to get rescued.