Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hi, I suppose this is pretty much a newbie question...
I've been looking around the "delete book" threads, but somehow I am not finding anything about the issue of completely unshelved (zero ratings, zero to-read, zero everything) books. Especially in cases, where there is some book data missing as well and no book to be found it could be merged with.

Thanks for any answers!
Phoebe

Are you asking if you should delete them?

If so only with due caution in the case where it is a duplicate of one already with complete data. Better to leave them than delete if not sure.

Also post in the this group if you are in any doubt

Hi, thanks for the quick answer!

Yes, I was wondering when I am allowed to delete it.
I check if I can combine it, of course, or if things are misspelled.

But, what if it is something like this:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...
?

No, we see a lot of things which look like that when ebook services take old documents, scan them, and sell them as ebooks. Looks like B&N sold that ebook at some point, judging by the 294- in the ISBN-13 field. You can clean up the record if you can track down cleaner data for it, but there's no reason to delete it from GR's database.

ah, ok, I see! Sorry then.
But that does make me curious...if a book (or ebook, or not-a-book) is, for example, in the database but never shelved at all for years (e.g. 5 or 10) it still stays in the database (although maybe it is even the only book by that author on the database)?

Yes - all books stay in the database, its a book cataloging site books should never be deleted just because they are not shelved

Yes, exactly, keep old & odd & stray books in the database - often I'm the first GR member to read them, and I love making good records out of incomplete information!

What Cheryl said. I do some fairly obscure reading and I'm always grateful when I don't have to create the whole record from scratch (plus, I get a kick out of knowing I'm reading/shelving something nobody else has).

Hi, thanks to all of you for clearing that up! :)