Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

There are a couple of short story collections in the database by Philip K. Dick entitled "A Handful of Darkness".

One of the editions contains two stories that the other edition doesn't. Presumably therefore they shouldn't be combined, but it's proving difficult to keep them separated.

Thoughts?

I've been having similar problems with books by some other authors (particularly Quicksilver and System of the World, by Neal Stephenson). I'd like to see an option to let a super librarian lock an edition so it can't be combined (or even edited?) unless first explicitly unlocked by a super librarian. This locking would only be used for editions which have these sorts of problems and the reason for locking it in the first place would be entered as part of the locking requirement so if another super librarian comes along they would know what the purpose for the extreme measure was. If a normal librarian wanted to make a change, they'd have to put in a request (probably in this group).

Think of it as the equivalent of what Wikipedia does when a particular page has been abused by competing or false information (Stephen Colbert has instigated this a few times). It would hopefully only be implemented in very rare cases, but would help prevent librarians from constantly having to fix recurring errors such as this.

Although I don't think I did it this time, I'll freely admit that I would have assumed those two editions of "A Handful of Darkness" were identical.

Until some other solution (i.e., locking) is put in place, all you can do is put a note in the book description (which usually doesn't work) and see if you can find a way to add info to the book title which is not too obnoxious but somehow makes it clear that they are not the same thing.

Yes, I've made these mistakes (as Michael knows) and I like your lock idea Michael. Even as a superlibrarian I wouldn't fool with any locked items unless I was 100% certain I knew what I was doing; I'd inquire in this group as well. Otherwise, I know these combining errors will continue for sure and they do make more, repetitive work for the librarians that have to continually correct mistakes.

Another option would be to add something, not in parentheses) to the titles to show their differences, but that idea is probably not as good as the ability to lock idea.

I can see the merits of locking. Certainly something needs to be done to protect these books from the auto-combiner!

If locking can be enabled, that would definitely be a good idea. Another possibility is to change the titles enough that the auto-combiner doesn't mistake them. I believe that while it ignores things in (parentheses) it does not ignore things in [brackets:] or {braces}? If that is indeed the case, then perhaps some notation can be added to the affected titles.

(Huh. GR keeps adding : before the second bracket. Must be an HTML thing.)

I think there's a function that allows us to refer to a specific book that way...let me see....

TheCommodore

Yep.

I really dont like the idea of auto-combining at all. Ive never used it and I cant imagine I ever will. How exactly does it work? Does anyone find it to be flawless and useful? I would just as soon like to see that feature taken away entirely.

I DO like the idea of locking certain editions down by a super-librarian. Is that already a capability that the SLs have or are we thinking of adding that as a feature? We should probably have a sticky thread like the Sisyphus list and Disambiguation list to get at these once we know for absolutely sure what we are dealing with and all agree that it should be locked.

I dont see the point in notes because I know what I do is as soon as I notice that there are two separetely listed same books by an author I immediately go to the combine page and take care of the one I saw plus whatever sticks out at me. Therefore I dont think the notes will really do any good unless theyre in a field that shows in the pop-up. I really dont like combining unless Im pretty pretty sure that theyre an exact match. Usually having the exact same title is a dead giveaway that theyre the same IF theyre both full-length novels, but with short story collections and reference material, one can never tell.

I find auto-combining useful when I stumble on an author who hasn't had any work done on them and has a lot of paperback/hardcover duplicates! I do always review the combinations, but it saves a lot of click-click-scroll-click-reload time. :)

I agree with Cait. I would be very unhappy if the auto-combine option were taken away.

I enjoy auto combine as well although I do scroll through all an author's works to make sure I be combining titles such as "3 complete novels" or "selected poetry" and I often combine the manual way as well, but auto-combine was a wonderful addition in my opinion.

What exactly happens when you click it? Ive always been too afraid to trust the system.

Ubik, If when you're in an author's profile and then click combine, if you click auto combine from that page it will combine all books with titles exactly the same without taking into consideration any information in the parentheses. Sometimes the information in the parentheses is important and might indicate different books: such as The Babysitter's Club (#1) and The Babysietter's Club (#2) that shouldn't be combined and it also won't combine many editions that should be combined because the spellings must be exact in order for the auto combine to work.

OK, so its automatic once you click it? Does it tell you what combined or do you have to go looking around for it?

Ubik, Ideally you look first and get a good idea of what will combine. No, it just tells you how many editions you combined, using the number only. I'm careful with it but it can be a very useful tool.

OK. I think I got it now. Thank you Lisa!

Ubik, Sure. Have fun.

Just don't use it on "A Handful of Darkness" :).

Or many, many, many others. That's the problem with it. I once combined "The Complete Works of..." and it turned out there was one such title for every year of that author's writings AND, as squirrel points out, there are some authors who have identical titles for books that are different.

LOL at SFSQ