Minnesota Bibliophage Continuum discussion

Instead of having a postal code box, or in addition to it, a text box for more specific "setting" information.

I think this mostly applies to fiction books...

Currently you can select a county, and add a postal code...but honestly? Who knows the postal codes other than very commonly used ones? It's not something usually mentioned in the text, and your average person reading a story that takes place in Fargo, ND isn't going to know the postal code. They probably aren't going to want to go look it up either. Plus there's the fact that many fiction books take place in made-up towns...they're not going to have an actual postal code.

So it would seem more beneficial to have a text box for whatever identifying location information a person wants to give. Whether it be "Texas", "The South", "Chicago" or whatever. I know bottomline it's not all that important and the info isn't usually included, but sometimes it is and I know of a lot of people who like to read books based on where they take place.

Just my thoughts :)

I added the short story collection The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis to the to-read list here because it is allegedly (a) much dirtier and funnier than the later TV series and (b) set at the University of Minnesota.

I must verify! A quick Wikipedia check does indeed show that author Max Shulman was a major contributor to Ski-U-Mah.

So, if true, why is Dobie Gillis never cited as a major Minnesota icon? Not to mention Maynard G. Krebs? And why is this book so hard to find now?

Also, I *must* see this early Dobie movie, starring not only Bob Fosse, but my all-time crush Debbie Reynolds (who turns 76 today, incidentally).

ISIS: Great minds think alike! I was just about to post a comment echoing your thoughts!

I was thinking that since this is a global website, perhaps the "postal code" field would be more useful as state/province.

Although there are many, many, many books for which the country setting is sufficient, stories in the romance and mystery/suspense genres are often colored by their location.

i.e., stories located in the Eastern seaboard states often include weather as a conflict element, stories located in Louisiana often include French phrases spoken by a Cajun or Creole character.

And Isis is right about some readers liking books set in particular states or regions. Lately, I've been on a New Orleans/Cajun/Bayou streak. I enjoy seeing how different authors use the local dialects and customs as elements of the story.

When it comes to fiction, genre and time period (not too specific, but ancient, middle ages, wartimes, etc.) would also be very helpful.

I think we have a case worth making here. The romance genre accounts for one-third of all new fiction sold each year in the U.S. This is a category in which time and setting is very important to the reader.

Colleen

I agree with Colleen, again, on this. She's absolutely, 100%, correct.

That's why several months ago I asked for Scotland to be by itself and not under the United Kingdom. There are many romance books specifically in Scotland and they have their own theme(s).

Great idea!

KATHRYNN: I haven't seen your request about Scotland and books about Scots aren't on my TBR pile, but I do have lots of friends who read them and they would agree with you 100%.

In the romance genre, there's a world of difference between the English regency subgenre and the Scottish Highlander subgenre.

In literature and culturally, Scotland and England are as different as Brazil and Alaska.

Maybe I should post msgs for the romance discussion groups directing them to a thread in the feedback group... ;-D

Colleen

Collen, I posted a note to folks in the Romantic Suspense Group to come over here and told them about your suggestions. Most are also in the Historical Romance and Time Travel Groups as well.

I think some thought you had to be a librarian to join this one...

My Scotland suggestion is here. And seeing it now, I realize I did a pitiful job explaining myself. But, I was a newbie! ;-)

I hadn't realized there'd been some replies here ;-)

I'm glad some others want the same thing!

For the fiction genre, more specific location info would be a great help. Saying a book takes place in the United States really doesn't tell a person anything.

And the time period thing for historical romances is a good point as well. I don't read all that many historicals, but I generally like Regency stuff if I do.

I'm glad everyone agrees that that field might be useful! We'll try to make it more flexible next time we tweak the book records.

I really like what's been done expanding the language field.

Could librarians have an option to write in the setting? There are a lot of books set in fictional places :).

We'll put that on the list to add. We constrained it to postal code an country because it would be fun to search by those in the future.

I can appreciate the 'fun' factor in searching by geographical location, but for those of us in the U.S. and Canada, 'postal code' is something very specific.

Lately, I've been on a 'New Orleans' binge (Creole/Cajun dialects and culture), but DON'T ask me what the zip is for New Orleans. I'd love to do a search for 'Louisiana' settings. Also when it comes to fiction, there is a notable difference in the cultural settings for storylines set in Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales.

All we're asking for is the ability to be more specific than country or region without having to bounce to the postal service sites - BTW, this is really hard to do with fictional town/city names '-D

Colleen

Colleen -

Great points. I think what we need to do is now clear :)

Thank you, Otis! That's why we sing your praises!

Colleen

I'm from the New Orleans area, Colleen, and (as with any fairly large city) there's more than one zip code for N.O. anyway. :)

Yes, the city of San Francisco, where I'm from, has about 30 zip codes for within the city, tons more as you get into nearby cities, towns, unincorporated areas.

I'm just glad to know what that postal code field was for! The editing I've done is minor and I just left them blank because I didn't know what to put there!

Mark wrote: "I added the short story collection The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis to the to-read list here because it is allegedly (a) much dirtier and funnier than the later TV series and (b) set at the U..."

Did you like it?

All right. I know we've talked about this in other topics, but:

Would it be possible to allow us to type the State in the zip code field again? At one time, we could. Now, we can't.

"The United States" is too broad and being able to narrow the setting down to say, Maine, Texas, California would be more accurate. I realize we can look up zip codes, but some cities are fictious whereas the State is not.

Thank you for allowing us to choose "The United Kingdom" and add Scotland. Could we not do something similar to "The United States" and Alaska? Please.

Again, there for awhile we could do this. Now it rejects. Even when I go to make a change in an older edit that once allowed a State, now it rejects and I have to clear the field in order to save.

Bummer.

I never understood the zip code thing. Even when you know a specific city, there isn't a one to one correspondence between city and zip code.

I'd love the option for city/state/country or city/provence/country.

Agreed. I don't know how difficult it would be, but it would be nice to be able to enter it like dates, i.e. year only, year and month, or full date.

But when you do that with dates, it actually defaults to 1s in the positions you leave blank.

True. I guess there isn't a good default for places.

However, I wish there was a better system for the dates. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine that I can't tell the difference between books I know I read in a particular month, versus books I read on the first of the month. Though, I suppose I could always change it to the second day of the month...but that's not quite as accurate.

~sigh~ I guess it's the Obsessive-Compulsive cross I must bear...

Oh yes, I like everyone's suggestions! I personally think this would be a wonderful addition for imaginary places, like Discworld.

Elizabeth wrote: "Oh yes, I like everyone's suggestions! I personally think this would be a wonderful addition for imaginary places, like Discworld."

Exactly: I was wondering why nobody had brought up the subject of SF and Fantasy which frequently have settings which have no possible zip-code, post-code or anything similar.

Would it be possible to have some way of indicating whether the setting is a real place or not? This could then be used to determine whether the offered list contained the current list of real places or a list of imaginary places generated from entries already added to the database.

It would be really nice if the lists could be multi-tiered, to allow say the entry of a State within the US, or a county within the UK, or similarly a country (such as Lancre) within a "setting" (such as the Discworld). I'm sure there are sufficient of us here who know enough to police such lists and make sure that they don't attempt ridiculous depths of granularity.