ŷ Librarians Group discussion
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Questions (from Librarians only)
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Request for feedback: Librarian tools and processes
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Jaclyn, could you give examples of these tools/processes? I don't quite understand the question. Do you mean technical things on the edit page (eg author/translator/illustrator as a drop-down menu instead of typing), technical improvements in the group (eg we want a "marked as done" button), organizational processes (what difficulties we face when fulfilling requests in this group), or something else?
P.S. Maybe it would be better to move this topic to the Librarians folder? We have an active life there :)
Mod
You're right Olga, I'm looking for thought on the edit page for any type of edit, as well as group improvements (be they technical or organizational).
There are 2 things I would change.The first is how the "set as default" description works. There needs to be a button where the default is NEVER used, such as a foreign editions.
The other thing I would add is having something like a "default" for authors of anthologies. It is already time-consuming to add them in. Being able to have the list copy from one edition to the next would be nice. The anthologies where the authors have changed between printings can just have them removed.
Technically I would argue that those are no longer the same book and shouldn't be combined. But since GR thinks abridged versions are the same as the full book it doesn't matter. (Seriously though, how is a book that is 800 pages the same as one that is 200. You might as well have the Cliffs Notes be counted as well.)
Also for anthologies: being able to hold and move the authors up and down like we do the books in the series would be great. Clicking the arrow umpteen times is monotonous, especially for books that have 20 plus authors.
Hi Jaclyn1 I have a few :) but lets start with profile photos for non GR authors
I'll use this famous author as an example;
/author/show...
When I check on copyright information, the link goes to a single photo & I get access denied when I try to shorten the link. On Wikipedia one photo definitely not in public domain, the other gives this
I don't think its allowed, but I don't know .
So I click on librarian edits. There are 35 pages. I'm not going to go through all those. ATM I look through the last three pages & first three pages & often find the librarian that way. Otherwise I delete the photo & leave a librarian note that photos must be in public domain & this is very rare for living or recently deceased authors. So no one tells the librarian that they have done it wrong & the problem continues.
Also when staff memorialise a deceased GR author they should either remove the author photo or make it clear that it has been added by the author or used with permission from the copyright holder.
2. It is not difficult to go through 35 (or in some cases a 100) pages of librarian edits, but I don't look on it as a wise use of my time.
3 The solution would be to separate author profile edits from book edits. It used to be like that. Developers posting in this group before they make changes like this would be a big help.
Another solution (which I have mentioned before) is not every librarian/staff member needs to be able to add author photos & maybe there should be a ranking between Super & regular librarians.
Quotes1. The biggest problem is that when a librarian merges quotes they lose likes off one or more of the quotes being merged. I've been told this bug is at least 11 years old.
Second biggest- the combine page used to give you the option to select 200 quotes page. 200 was removed a year or two ago, so I am certainly not going to try to combine quotes on very popular authors without it!
/quotes/comb... (scroll down)
2. I worry that if I do the merges I could lose librarian status.
3. Long term - fix the bug. Short term put something like. Unfortunately merging quotes may cause some likes to be deleted. ŷ regrets this but feels this is better than contributing to the proliferation of inaccurate quotes circulating around the internet. in the manual & in the thread at the top of the quotes folder.
& for the combine - put back the 200 option.
Awards1 Which are now/still a dumpster fire. I used to do a lot on awards & was one of the librarians who did a really big clean up & got them down (briefly) to 210 pages. 16th April last year it was 258 pages. Now just over 268 pages - no, I'm quite sure there aren't 300 more literary awards.
2 There are a few reasons this is difficult although the instructions are clearer now. Again, I don't believe every librarian/staff member needs to be able to do them. & I don't think any author should be able to as there is no requirement for them to read the manual. I've just looked at an author that has added around 5, possibly 6 non awards to the award field.
3 Most extreme solution would be to get rid of the awards field altogether. ŷ Choice Winners/nominees now appear in the description anyway. /book/show/5...
Fairer would be to get get ŷ Librarians to name the top literary awards from their country. I'm trying to think how top genre awards like the Nebula should be handled. Most of them would have a librarian who curates them. Maybe there could be a submission process for the awards to be considered.
* * *
4 In spite of problems with the merges, I like working with quotes the most. It is very satisfying to edit an inaccurate quote & for the most part the process works well unless you are trying to combine quotes of a highly popular author.
Carol, I agree about the change log of the author profiles, I made this suggestion last year in help 1 Talking about change logs, I find the way the book change log handles merged editions limits the ability to properly check an edition that has been the target in a merge. (To be clear, this is after you already selected 'this edition', not 'all editions') In the log itself you can not see a difference between the entries from the merged edition or the remaining edition. Sometimes the table at the bottom of the change log gives a clue.
All the entries for combing/separating showing in the log of a specific edition can also be cluttering for a default edition, but those are at least distinguishable from the book edits.
2 I find this an issue as it makes checking the log of some editions a far bigger task than it should be, or sometimes kind of impossible, to be sure there have not been any strange/incorrect edits for an edition. And without that certainty there are a lot of requests in this group I don't want to take the responsibility for making the edit/merge.
3 Solution: either a(n extra) way to filter so you only get the true edits for that edition or at least a visual difference between the entries for the merged edition or the remaining edition. Although the second will not solve that much for a default edition that had 150/200+ entries in the change log after some merges.
To add to what is said above about the author changelog:The author changelog is limited to 100 pages. At the moment, looking at the changelog for Agatha Christie, the last page of the changelog has the date 11 March 2024: /author/edit...
4. Is there any tool / process that you think works well or enjoy working with?The introduction of Work-ID's for combining editions has been really helpful.
Those work-IDs are indeed handy.A process that is currently not going well is leaving useful change comments by librarians. A major factor is the current article in the manual is not very useful, as was discussed here /topic/show/... And with the recent change in policy for ASINs, there will be some major overhauls of data on certain editions, so even more important people should leave change comments.
2 This leads to:
Not using change comments makes it hard to understand why an edit was made or which source was used. (If you're doing a page number request it is very useful to know that the old number was from the publisher, so the new one from someone's copy is likely more reliable. Or that the number was changed as the last 15 pages were a preview)
Cover changes are for me kind of the worst to have no change comment as the rules for changing a cover are so strict. (the number of times I had to reverted a cover change only to see that is was just replacing an marked placeholder or a better image of the same cover)
And the current article leads to:
- Well-intended librarian looking at this article will not find useful information.
- Most cases I want to give other librarians information about the use of change comments, it is a situation currently not in the article, so I would have to write something myself instead of being able to just give the link. (Like cover changes without a comment.)
3 First update the article with input from (experienced) librarians. Then it should be brought to attention of all librarians, so we all create a habit of leaving change comments were needed.
1. Least favourite: Reordering authors in books with more than, say, three authors.2. Elaboration: Sometimes you'll get lists that have twenty auto-imported authors, and the editor is number 18—then the options are to laboriously move the editor up one click and refresh at a time, or remove the current primary author and add them later down the list, which is inelegant.
3. Suggested improvement: I'd very much like to have a drag-and-drop option for multiple authors, as we do in series pages.
4. Tools that work well: For the most part, series pages—there are still some glitches and inconsistencies, but that drag-and-drop function makes up for a lot!
Another thing I would like to see change. On the editions page instead of the amount of times a book has been rated have the times it has been shelved.Also, if the amount of shelving that requires a super could be raised from 5 it would go along way towards cutting the chafe. The amount of books that have been shelved 6-10 times for an edition that should have been marked as invalid years ago is staggering.
1. Editing authors, both ordering then and roles.2. Reordering takes ridiculous amount of time, since the changes are saved multiple times. For the roles, its just a mess in general, i saw multiple names for the same roles like 'narrator', 'voice', reader' or 'manga', 'comic', 'illustrations'
3. Drag and drop for authors editing, save only after done -> second save button at the top of the page?
For roles maybe some additional dropdown with options
4. combine editions work really well
NeyNey wrote: "3. ...second save button at the top of the page?"You don't actually have to scroll to the bottom. Hitting enter while you are on any of the data blocks (aside from description and notes) will automatically save the page.
I found that out accidentally early on when I meant to hit the 3 and hit the enter. My typing skills are bizarre to say the least. For numbers I always use the 10-pad. I think that is what my sister called it. It was over 30 years ago, so who knows.
Jaclyn the item I mentioned above about raising the amount of book that have been added led to this:I was curious about the actual message since it has been a while since I saw it. It actually says:
"Classification can only be set to 'Deleted' by super-librarians when the book has many reviews ".
The book I just tried that on had been ADDED 6 times. It had been REVIEWED 2 times. The message contradicts what we have been told. The book I was trying to merge it with had been added 154 times. I never paid attention to the reviews, but I guess the amount of them is for the entire thread and not that edition since the one I was trying to merge in into also listed 2 reviews.
A second submission:1. Problem area: Saving books in which the auto-imported descriptions are missing spaces, leading the system to think that they contain links and refusing to save.
2. Elaboration: Imported descriptions are often missing many spaces, and it is deeply tedious to go through and find the six missing spaces in a rambling 500-word description. I know some librarians just delete the description if it's not a valid book anyway, but there are also many, many, many valid books with missing spaces in descriptions, and sometimes a busy librarian just wants to fix (e.g.) the title, not go through the description with a fine-toothed comb.
3. Suggested improvement: Fine-tune the link ban so that it doesn't prevent a librarian from saving if no changes have been made to the description.
Mod
Liralen wrote: "A second submission:1. Problem area: Saving books in which the auto-imported descriptions are missing spaces, leading the system to think that they contain links and refusing to save.."
Another issue with that is the way Europe handles large numbers.
Many countries use a period instead of a comma.
1. What is your least favourite editing tool or process to use on ŷ?Changing an author on the "Edit Book" page when the name has multiple spaces between first and last name due to duplicate names. A lot of recent posts in the forum are in the vein of "my book was added to the wrong author profile," typically by the Amazon bot which just dumps them into the default author profile. I waste a lot of time figuring out how many spaces I need to insert into the author name field to get the book to the right profile.
2. Why do you find this tool or process difficult?
The number of steps it takes to fix this is SO TEDIOUS:
1. Open the correct author page
2. Click on one of their books
3. Click edit book details
4. Copy the author name with the correct number of spaces
5. Close/cancel the book edit
6. Update book record with the correct name
3. How do you think this could be improved?
Allow Librarians to update the author by the author ID. The process would be much simpler:
1. Open the correct author page
2. Copy the author ID from the URL
3. Update book record with the author ID
I made a forum post about this earlier this year with more info:
/topic/show/...
4. Is there any tool / process that you think works well or enjoy working with?
Combine tool works pretty well.
Also +1 to these "least favorite" tools/processes that other Librarians have mentioned:
--Reordering authors in books
--Saving books in which the auto-imported descriptions are missing spaces, leading the system to think that they contain links and refusing to save
+1 to "set as default" description. If you are not very careful, then after combining all the descriptions may turn out to be empty. There needs to be confirmation. Something like "If you want to set this description as default, click OK".Anthology. I don't do them because it takes a lot of time. I saw how some librarians added authors as a list to the description. It may not be ideal, but it's better than nothing.
+1 to raising the amount of shelving that requires a superlibrarian. Or change the amount of shelving to the amount ratings/reviews. Many duplicates like "TITLE by AUTHOR (2017-10-06)" were added by users to the “Want to read� folder 6-20 times and have neither ratings nor reviews.
+1 to dropdown for roles + possibility to add your own option. The same way changing the format works, it is very convenient.
Multiple authors with the same name. Of all the options I saw, I liked it best when the default account (to which the bot adds books) is a collection of other profiles (in the "about the author" field). With links, number of spaces and short description (fiction writer / historian / medicine).
LanguagesMy least favourite process is to search for requests in certain language. When I type, for example, “Russian� in the search, I see a few new requests (both in the "add a book" folder and in the "closed"), then posts from 2012, then from the “looking for a project� folder, then new ones again. And some simply don’t show up in the search. In fact, the search works differently every day.
I had a conversation with other librarians who want to fulfill requests in a certain language (Persian, Bulgarian, Bengali, etc.).
Solution - search filters. Ability to search in a specific folder. So that we can see only new requests in the “add book� folder. In this case, the librarian will fulfill requests that other librarians missed due to lack of language knowledge.
What I like most is combining publications in different languages (I know several). Languages are my thing :)
Olga's post reminded me of another feature that would be really helpful when searching the forum group -- the ability to see what folder the post is in. Currently you can only see the topic name.I like to search for the phrase "add my book" to help authors add new works to the site. But I often waste time opening requests that have already been completed and moved to the "Closed" folder, because I can't tell where they are from the search results page alone.
This will be even more important once the "Archive post" button is enabled (which I hope is still being worked on, would be such a huge help).
And for an extra wishlist item to go along with Olga's search filters idea, add the option to exclude entire folders from search results (such as Closed/Archived).
A minor technical issue.When I (writing this post) click "add book/author" and choose, for example, "Editor)", I see deleted authors as well. Like this Editor) Tacitus (H. Furneaux. It looks like the books by this "author" were deleted/invalid, but the name remains in the database. It would be helpful if these deleted authors did not appear here. I use this instrument to find and fix incorrected names.
Third submission:1. Problem area: Author and book disambiguation pages are difficult to use for author profiles with more than a handful of books and works with more than a few editions.
2. Elaboration: On author disambiguation pages, the list is in no apparent order, it is not sortable or searchable, there's no information visible beyond title, and the radio buttons to click to consign a book to another profile are tiny. On book disambiguation pages, more info is visible if you hover, but looking for a handful of editions that have been incorrectly combined (e.g...by the bots) can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
3. Suggested improvement: In the long term, overhaul both pages entirely, including a search function and the ability to find an edition by book ID. In the short term, for the author disambiguation page, change the radio buttons to bigger buttons (or make the whole field clickable, as it is on the combine page). For the book disambiguation page, make more information, such as ISBN/ASIN, immediately visible (without hovering) so that it is possible to search the browser page to find editions you've already identified as problem children.
Mod
On the combine page add an option for numbers and "other". Now we have "all" and then the letters. Titles that begin with numbers as well as any foreign language that doesn't adhere to Latin script are completely left out as a sorting option.Jaclyn, we have had a bug since at least January where the second page of an author's work isn't showing up. You get the first 100 and then nothing. We were doing a work around, but the title I am working on now won't allow it.
The ability to create a book from the combination page would be nice, especially with authors who have hundreds of titles.It is easier to search the book title from there.
It would be convenient if ASINs appeared on the book page for Kindle editions.
Liralen wrote: "Third submission:1. Problem area: Author and book disambiguation pages are difficult to use for author profiles with more than a handful of books and works with more than a few editions.
2. Elab..."
It could help if on the disambiguate page the editions were sorted/recognisable by work. It would make it much easier to get all editions at once or to find that one rogue edition you have no idea in which language it might be.
Talking about the disambiguate page, currently we can't access the disambiguate page of a ŷ author. I'm not sure if this is just a result of the fact we can't access the profile edit page or if it is a intentional decision to not make it accessible in different way. (For the 'similar names' link this was at first also an issue for GR author pages, then the link was also added to the combine page so we can access it there.)
The result is that any case where a GR author is incorrectly the primary author requires a lot of times checking every edition to get it sorted. Like sorting between two GR authors or the GR author is a valid author for a work but not the primary author.
Take for example Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Pratchett should be the primary author, but some editions have Gaiman as primary author. Finding those is now very time consuming as you can't use his disambiguate page as he is a GR author. (And Ctrl+F doesn't help either as he is supposed to be listed as second author.)
An other solution could be adding an option so we can sort the editions on the 'all editions' page by primary author profile. If you can have first all John^Smith editions and then John^^Smith it would also make things easier.
K1 wrote: "This, you can already do in "show all editions" link. On top of list of the editions, there is an option for "add new edition"I am aware we can do it from "all editions".
This is one less step to take.
I've said it elsewhere but please import Kindles with their page numbers. They are the only source we are allowed to used.Librarian Rankings. it is nearly a year since they have worked - & it is the only reward that some of us get.
How about simplifying all of the rankings to just top 100 internationally? That would be more fair.
Mod
![annob [on hiatus] (annob) | 4048 comments](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1674812294p1/68231680.jpg)
My observations: The ACE Tool
It worked really well when it was first developed, but changes in other areas has broken it.
- when the 'starting point' edition has description punctuation issues (common now with the current import feed), the ACE tool deletes the ASIN from the original record, then stops running. The ASIN is not moved to new edition, it's just gone from the database.
- when there's an ISBN in the ASIN field, the ACE Librarian Note created says "Alternate cover edition of ASIN 1665096675", even though it's clearly an ISBN number.
The Combine page:
- When the 'all' sort option is selected, the combine page sort the workds based on one of the LEAST popular titles, which often is a forreign language edition starting with a different letter than the default edition. Making it appear works are randomly scrambled rather than sorted A to Z on the combine page.
- The number of shelvings on the Combine page is often (always?) not correct. I've found editions on user's bookshelves where they've clearly shelved a specific edition, only to find that edition display '0 shelvings' on the combine page. Given there is policy regarding Invalid/Deleted status that depends on number of shelvings, the incorrect shelving data is problematic.
Olga wrote: "+1 to "set as default" description. If you are not very careful, then after combining all the descriptions may turn out to be empty. There needs to be confirmation. Something like "If you want to set this description as default, click OK"."Or perhaps radio buttons instead of the one check box? E.g., "set this as default description for editions" and "description applies to this edition only"—with the first button not affecting books for which the second button had been selected.
It would also be useful for the system to be set so that, when combining, a blank description cannot override a description with text. (This used to be the case, but it changed after some update or other. I've reported the problem to Support before but never gotten much traction.)
Blank descriptions overriding text is sometimes also an issue with adding a new edition.The opposite woud also be nice for a 'description applies to this edition only' button. If one edition has a description with this status and all other editions have a blank description it still shouldn't use that one description. This to prevent descriptions with very edition specific information ending up on other editions.
Mod
Mod
Hi Renske - do you have an example of this on hand? A link to a log illustrating this issue would be helpful.
Mod
"The number of shelvings on the Combine page is often (always?) not correct. I've found editions on user's bookshelves where they've clearly shelved a specific edition, only to find that edition display '0 shelvings' on the combine page. Given there is policy regarding Invalid/Deleted status that depends on number of shelvings, the incorrect shelving data is problematic."
And another one! annob, do you have an example handy of the above two concerns? Thanks!
Jaclyn wrote: "And another one! annob, do you have an example handy of the above two concerns?"Combine page 'All' selection sort example:
If you scroll to the book titles "Viken Command" or "Surrender to the Cyborgs" on this combine page below, you can see they fall in with titles starting with the letter C rather than the expected V & S. The least shelved title of each work is a forreign lang edition with a title starting with the C.
/book/combin...
It would be much easier to find titles if the primary/most shelved edition of a work influenced the sorting order for 'All'.
Example of the number of shelvings on the Combine page not correct:Example edition with ASIN B08WVCDGD1, combine page says "added 0 times"
/book/combin...
User bookshelf view, where the edition with that ASIN has been shelved by the user:
[redacted bookshelf link}
Jaclyn, please let me know when you have copied the user bookshelf link, so I can remove it to protect the privacy of the user as much as possible.
(Edited to remove user link.)
Mod
Jaclyn, for the change logs, this one is not too long, but already shows these issues /book/edits/... These are the 83 entries in the log left after selecting 'this edition'. You can see how many entries must be from now merged editions (Information of Dutch and German editions on the first page alone) and the '[librarian name] combined' entries (more on the second page).The default edition of Pride and Prejudice has 44,018 entries for 'this edition' in the change log, to illustrate the scale of this issue. (Change that to 44,149 by the time I posted this reply)
Mod
Thank you!
This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
I'm looking to gather some information on the tools and processes you currently use to add / edit books and authors on ŷ. This will help me and the team understand your tooling pain-points and wish-lists.
If possible, can you please answer the following, limiting your response to max. 3 tools / processes:
1. What is your least favourite editing tool or process to use on ŷ? E.g. tooling could be combining books or editing author profiles; process could be working in a specific folder in the Librarians Group. There's no wrong answer, and these two categories can overlap.
2. Why do you find this tool or process difficult?
3. How do you think this could be improved?
4. Is there any tool / process that you think works well or enjoy working with?
Thanks for taking the time to offer your feedback!