Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Librarian Notes Field
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Michael, If Goodreads could do this, I love it. It's especially helpful on the combine books page because that's where librarians at work doing edits would see it.Edit: I think you should post this suggestion in the Feedback group or send a message to Otis, Ken-ichi, MICHAEL.
Oh, I like this a lot!Perhaps a midway suggestion would be to have a marker on books which have librarian notes, like:
Book Title (Hardcover) details | separate
Book Title (Paperback) note | details | separate
with the "note" showing just the note in pop-up.
(Maybe even: books with notes are exempted from auto-combine?)
MIchael, Why don't you post a link to this thread to the Feedback group in the suggestions folder, or somewhere. Somewhere where Otis & Co. will be more likely to see it. Jessica monitors this group but I'm not so sure other Goodreads staff does.
Mod
Michael, great idea -And Cait, I like the idea of exempting books with the note from auto-combine.
Ok, I just added a note about this in Feedback to send the powers that be to look for this over here.--
I've just noticed that this thread is cataloged under "Otis & Jessica: Help, Please!" I would have sworn I put it in "Suggestions". I don't know if (a) I messed up, (b) it's a bug, or (c) someone moved it?
Cait, I thought about having a separate note link as a compromise between burying it in the details and just displaying the note directly. Assuming the link only shows up when there is a note, the advantage would be that it becomes obvious that there is a note without overly-cluttering up the page. The disadvantage would be if it's too subtle or people just don't bother to drop a mouse over the link to read the notes. Having the note front and center is inelegant, but may be an advantage for getting the message seen.
If the Powers-That-Be are willing to institute something like this, maybe they could try it both ways and we could see how it looks.
Exempting books with notes from auto-combine is a very interesting idea. Personally, I'd be happy to completely remove the auto-combine feature; I've never used it and never plan on using it. I'm willing to manually click my way through...
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That would be me.
Never underestimate the power of Rivka!And yeah, anything that would mean I didn't have to hover over particular books like a helicopter-mom would be great!
Assuming the link only shows up when there is a note, the advantage would be that it becomes obvious that there is a note without overly-cluttering up the page. The disadvantage would be if it's too subtle or people just don't bother to drop a mouse over the link to read the notes.I like the idea of it being in a bright color, and also of being in the place where normally the "details" link is. :)
Personally, I'd be happy to completely remove the auto-combine feature; I've never used it and never plan on using it. I'm willing to manually click my way through...
I do rather like the auto-combine, and I suspect it is blamed for more evils than it actually perpetrates! Perhaps we could compromise on a strong warning when you auto-combine, something that forces you to click through an acknowledgment that it's not a good idea for complicated edition situations?
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I have never before wished sigs were enabled on the GR forums.
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Agreed.
Great idea, Michael. I'll second the idea of putting the note text in bold or red or something. Just saying "note" would be too easy to miss.
And maybe a way to add a note at the top of an author's combine page asking users not to use auto-combine for this author because it causes problems. Because even though Michael's Note idea is great and I love it, some people just go to a combine page and by default click auto-combine. They won't see or notice Notes added about not combining. And then you defeat part of the whole purpose of adding Notes.
I like auto combine. I don't use it often but when I do I'm careful. Before I use it, I tend to scan the combine books page of an author to see what books could be auto-combined and which would be combined incorrectly if I used the feature.
Bold & red sounds good! I love this idea of Michael's and the enhancements/details suggested.
Mod
I think Cait's suggestion is better. Books with LNs are exempted from auto-combine.
Wow, this is a fantastic idea, I love it! So often I've seen things combined wrong and un-combine them, only to check back at a later date and find them combined again. Looks like this should help a bunch!
I love Michael's idea and Cait's idea about the auto-combine!
I like Isis_FG's idea. Not too complex and unmissable.I would like to be able to add a note on the combine page if an author is being worked on to please not to do anything at all. I know you can add the note to the profile, but the profile might not be looked at.
Michael's idea is excellent. Possible other considerations: If a book has already been combined and then separated and someone goes to combine it again, have a warning come up that says "This book was previously combined and then separated by "librarians name". Before combining again please contact "said librarian".If this librarian only allows friends messaging then have a link to a librarian discussion page that would be filled out to discuss the merits of combining/separating.
I personally think the messaging block should be overriden by librarian to librarian contact-with a safe-gap reporting structure for undesired communication.
This all is supposing that goodreads keeps a who merged/separated id.
I know this may sound like a bit much, but I don't think it is too complicated programing wise and librarians work hard enough not to be redoing, over and over again, the same thing.
p.s.- I know enough about my grammar, punctuation and spelling skills, or I should say, lack there of, to not mess around with any text! If I ever do it will be with my dh's editing, I promise!
-Just in case any of you librarians were starting to worry! ;]
In looking into how goodreads handles international editions of a book. I used "A Christmas Carol" to check and saw that it had "Eine Weihnachtsgeschichte" combined as one of the editions. When I searched using this title name not the american, although I did get one book entitled "Eine Weihnachtsgeschichte" it was not the edition I saw among the combined editions. I thought I saw somewhere, where it was recommended to combine international editions and/or editions of the same book different title name. If the general searching readers will be using to find the books, will not find them, I think it is a mistake to combine them.
sorry if this was already discussed, it's a bit overwhelming to try to absorb all this.
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The problem was, I recall, that only a certain number of the most popular editions were searchable, so a book with many many editions might have some farther down the list that didn't make the cut but had unique names. I also recall that Otis was actively working on that a while ago, so if it's still a problem it should be raised in the Goodreads Feedback group again, I'd say.
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Actually, rivka, Otis claimed to have fixed that, and I just did a few test searches and did get the correct results....
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I like the librarian notes idea. I'll make a note to add it!
Oh, cool. Because we desperately need it!Just today I've separated a book and a workbook, the handfuls of darkness (again!) and recombined a PKD with its friends with different titles. Oh and separated a RL Stevenson omnibus from some novellas.
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Yippee!
Sounds like a great idea - thumbs up from me as well.
We really need this. Someone (actually multiple someones) have been screwing around with the various Collected Works of Philip K. Dick again, "helpfully" renaming and combining volumes which are different works (idiot publisher released different versions of the collected works, reusing the same title for different volumes!?! with minor rearrangement of the contents) and I can't even email them because their profiles are private which means they (or someone else) will probably do it again in a few weeks.
The more I think about it, the more I think Goodreads librarians should be able to be messaged by all other librarians (about librarian business) whether or not their profiles are private. If a member librarian isn't willing to be messaged by other librarians, they shouldn't be a librarian here. If anyone abused the privilege, such an inappropriate messaging to an underage librarian, they could be flagged and reported, but hopefully that would be an extremely rare occurrence.
oh, what, AGAIN?Aaaaaaaaargh. I've done so much work on PKD. It's not that Theo again is it?
RENAMING them? how're we ever going to fix that!
Someone has also decided to combine French omnibuses of Dick novels with single novels. Sometimes, with single novels that aren't even IN the omnibus!Can't we just put a big padlock on PKD? I'm so sick of this.
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Theo was one of the culprits...
Actually, this brings up another idea...the ability to search librarian edits. Right now we can view all of the edits from a librarian, but for anyone who is active, it ends up being pages and pages of changes. If we want to see what they've done to a specific author, for example, you just have to scroll and scan. The ability to do a search on the librarian edits page might be good for finding specific changes someone has made.
I see you've been out there fixing PKD, Michael. Thanks so much--I couldn't face it!
On the combine page, I could see two ways to do it. The clean way to do this would be to add the note to the bottom of the popup details box. Although cleaner, I think a better way would be to have the note listed immediately between the book and the details link, perhaps in a different style or color font (red comes to mind).
This might really help prevent erroneous combinations of books with similar/identical titles. Right now we see:
Book Title
Book Title (Mass market paperback) details | separate
Book Title (Hardcover) details | separate
Book Title
Book Title (Paperback) details | separate
With a note instituted on this page, we might instead see:
Book Title
Book Title (Mass market paperback) details | separate
Book Title (Hardcover) details | separate
Book Title
Book Title (Paperback) Lib.Note: Do not combine this with "Book Title" - it is a different book details | separate
I see this primarily as a STOP COMBINING THESE BOOKS device, but there are other uses for the field as well, information which we're currently awkwardly adding to the title of the book or putting in the book description when it really shouldn't be there.