Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

The name of the series according to fantastic fiction and the author's web site is "Sun Wolf and Starhawk."
#1 is http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...
#2 is http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...
#3 is http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

(The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The Witches of Wenshar, The Dark Hand of Magic)

Only one edition of WoW has been identified as being "Unschooled Wizard 2." Do each of the editions need to be edited individually, or is there a way to change all at once? There ARE different language editions...

Thanks to all.

p.s. When adding/editing a series, should one include A, An or The or drop them?

There isn't a way to edit the series information of a book all at once right now; each edition's title has to be edited separately.

Also, some translations may have translated the series name as well, so we don't generally put the original-language series names on translations.

As for "Unschooled Wizard" as the series name, that's the edition of the book that's on my shelves, and I've just checked that nowhere on the book is the series name "Unschooled Wizard" used; it was probably a fan name for the series before the author provided an official one, and it's fine to change it.

Regarding the use of articles such as a/an/the on series names, I don't think that there is a consensus on that. I put them in, if they're part of the series name, on the idea that when we do migrate to a series object we'll be able to apply the same "sort by" rules to the series titles as we currently apply to the book titles.

Cait: Thanks for getting back to me. I'm thinking somebody saw this http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/73... and made an incorrect assumption. So... edit all individually, and leave the non-English titles alone. I think I can do that. ;-)

OK... It looked simple enough till I got here. http://www.goodreads.com/book/edit/21... Any idea what Unicorn is and where it should be?

When I was looking at all the fields at the bottom of the page, it stirred up a question: "Would editing the Original Title field take care of them at one fell swoop?"

I think I'm gonna wait for an answer now, thanks.

(edit) I think I might have answered my own question. Editing the original title would change ALL editions, non-English included, right? :-s

"Unicorn" is probably the imprint within the publishing house, which is data that would go in the "edition" field.

The original title field -- and all of the fields in the "work settings" section -- apply to all editions, yes, but they don't change the individual editions' titles. The original title field is for the title under which the first edition of the book was published, which of course is the same for any subsequent edition. There's a section on these fields in the librarian's manual which has more detail.

(sigh) It was going OK, till I got to this one. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12... It gives me a conflict between some dates and won't let me save the record. I'm guessing either there is more data validation in place now than when the record was created, or someone edited the original master record.

Help would be appreciated, explanations appreciated more.

There was a bug a while back where the original publication date (the one at the bottom of the page in the "work settings" section) didn't get set correctly when editions were combined -- if you combine two editions, the combined book is supposed to have the earliest of the separate original publication dates taken as the original publication date of the whole book. However, the bug left some records in the database with edition publication dates earlier than the original publication dates. If you try to save a record with the dates mismatched like that you'll get an error telling you that the edition can't have been published before it was first published, which is sensible! Albeit confusing when you weren't the one who entered the dates incorrectly and you were just trying to save a different change entirely.

The short fix is: when this happens, scroll down to the bottom of the page and either set the original publication date to the publication date for this edition or just remove the month and day from the original publication date (the bug only affected the month and the day, so when this happens the years should be correct).

Actually, this happens with the year sometimes too. I'm not sure the bug is the only source of this conflict.

It's not so much confusing as it is ... (sigh) whatever. The point I was trying to make before the brain fart was that I didn't know where to get information to make it right. I went to WorldCat but all they had was the year. Ironically, this is the edition that I have... somewhere.

Well, I have two possible fixes, so let's see what happens.

Andy wrote: "(sigh) It was going OK, till I got to this one. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12... It gives me a conflict between some dates and won't let me save the record. I'm guessing either there is m..."

In this book I've found a fail. The book with ISBN '8477225931' is not related to this book. Instead, it's a translation of The Silent Tower, so I'm going to change it.

(sigh (chuckles)) yeah, it's me again...

I was looking at the books by Charles L Grant, writing as Lionel Fenn. My first question is can we make Lionel Fenn a link in Grant's biography to go to Fenn's page? Would regular HTML work? Or should it be the goodreads syntax as above? IF it would work, should I?

The second question is series related, hence its location in this thread. There are two trilogies, according to Fantastic Fiction, Quest for the White Duck and Diego. If those are acceptable, no problem. The question is for the five books in the Kent Montana series. Would the correct title be The Really Ugly Thing from Mars (Kent Montana, #1) or Kent Montana and the Really Ugly Thing from Mars (Kent Montana, #1)?

As always, thanks for your help and patience.

Andy wrote: "(sigh (chuckles)) yeah, it's me again..."

I know this is my academic background talking, but you should never feel the need to apologize for a request for information! :) How else can anyone learn?


Andy wrote: "My first question is can we make Lionel Fenn a link."

Yes. Sounds like a good idea. Note that it's a psuedonym. Links in both directions are fine, actually.


Andy wrote: "Would regular HTML work? Or should it be the goodreads syntax as above?"

Either will work, and either is fine.


Andy wrote: "Would the correct title be The Really Ugly Thing from Mars (Kent Montana, #1) or Kent Montana and the Really Ugly Thing from Mars (Kent Montana, #1)?"

When in doubt, go with the cover. That seems to imply option #2.

Also, I merged Charles L Grant (no period) with the correct version of the author.

This is more of a WTF? question than a request for information. When I look at the author profile for Lionel Fenn, one of the books shows up as "Kent Montana/invisibl" with no image. If you click on it though, it shows the edited title along with the image I got from Fantastic Fiction. Are there multiple copies of the records in the database?

I just cleared my cache, and came back and did a search for Lionel Fenn. The book looks fine there. When I look at the author profile, it's still wrong.

Are we experiencing technical difficulties here?

rivka wrote ... Also, I merged Charles L Grant (no period) with the correct version of the author.

I wish you would have showed me what you did. I never thought to look if there were multiple profiles.

I'll make the other edits tomorrow... only... looking at them again, the titles for the last two in the KM series don't start with "KM and". Just go with the covers, right? :-)

Re #13, author pages are cached. It will correct itself in a day or two, or you can edit and save the author (with no changes) to force the cache to reset immediately.

Re #14, I didn't go looking for another version; I noticed the period was missing. So I edited it in, which prompted the merge with the existing correct version. Clear as mud?

Re #13, I think so. So if I were to edit the profile to add the link back to Charles L. Grant, it would correct the strange book listing? So that's not an author record with 12 book records, but a totally separate author PAGE? wow... Whoever thunk up THAT one?

Re #14, perfectly.

Thanks again! :-D

Andy wrote: "So if I were to edit the profile to add the link back to Charles L. Grant, it would correct the strange book listing?"

It should, yes.


Andy wrote: "So that's not an author record with 12 book records, but a totally separate author PAGE?"

I'm not understanding the distinction you are making. Lots of GR pages are cached; it helps reduce server load.

I guess it comes down to volume and optimization. Anything I've worked with before was live and real-time, i.e. any change in the database would be instantly visible in the results page, depending on the browser cache.

How many users were likely to be accessing a given page of said database at any time? ;)